City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Turg Fiction: IX (ArcID #351787) is now LIVE!

dark_vengence

By dark_vengence,
Posted on: 2010-01-06 22:52 in Mission Architect

 

Posted

Quote:
Arc Name: Turg Fiction: IX
Arc ID: 351787
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Turgenev (Live and Test)
Difficulty Level: Optimized for Security Levels 30-40, accommodates 1-40. Middling difficulty.
Estimated Time to Play: 1-2 Hours
Synopsis: Where fire burns cold; blood bears unforgiven debt; and a wounded heart cries for justice. - This Family-centric, story-driven hero arc is optimally designed for Security Levels 30-40, and is team-sizing friendly. NOTE: This arc is in live testing, but is otherwise polished for public consumption. Critiques encouraged! HEAVY READING INVOLVED!

This is my feedback thread for my submission for Dr. Aeon's Architect Challenge for December 2009. The theme, "doing evil for a greater good." My arc was, of course, immediately disqualified because I made it a choice at the very end. Oh well!

I'm always looking for feedback. If you star the arc, please give me some info as to why you rated it as such. I'm NOT a one-star rage vendetta stalker, so if you genuinely didn't like the story or mechanics, please tell me why. On the other hand, I love high ranks, if it's deserved.

I'm happy to discuss the story points, mechanics, etc., in this thread. So, beyond this first post, please throw SPOILER warnings before you ask, and I'll do the same for my answers!

I hope you like my published offering. It was written as a one-shot, but I left the ending "open" to the possibility of a sequel if people would like more of this storyline/dramatis personae. Please review my arc, enjoy, and tell me what you think.


Architect is one of the most flexible tools for online storywriting I've ever seen. My continued thanks to the Devs for making this system possible; to the players for inspiring the authors to write for the general populace; and to my fellow authors for writing saga after saga for the noblest reason of all: To enliven the imagination.

 

Posted

Warning: this post will likely contain SPOILERS.

Reflecting on the arc a bit more, there were a couple story points that came to mind as well as the technical issues we talked about right afterward.

The first, which is a bit minor, is that I think you might want to emphasize a bit more at the beginning that this is a branch of the Family which has gone legit. I know for a while I was wondering "ok, why is my hero agreeing to do work for the family...?" I even canceled the arc temporarily after reading the first briefing so I could go look at the description again and make sure it was marked 'heroic', not 'villainous'. It becomes clearer after a while, but I was a bit confused at first.

Also, while the title for the last mission read 'Choose', I never actually saw a point where I would get to *make* a choice. IX and the family guy both were waiting for me in the very first room, and both of those objectives were required, as far as I could tell. After that (by the way, nice map choice), the only thing left to do was to go get the chick and clear the bombs. From what I've seen, the usual interface authors use for making a choice is to make the mission failable and offer different dialogue and clues for that, but I didn't see any way to fail the mission other than somehow getting the escort killed, which I don't know how I would have managed. Was there actually intended to be a choice offered to the player, or is the title simply referencing the choice your character must presumably have made in accepting the mission?

@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.

This is what it means to be a tank!

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino View Post
IX and the family guy both were waiting for me in the very first room..
*facepalm*

That map drives me nuts. IX is supposed to spawn to the BACK of the map, not the front, but it seems more often than not that the map just decides "oo, this looks like a nice little spot" and ignore your placement priorities... and yes, the "choice" is involved in the mission fail option, where you can lead Monica to IX and let IX take her out by stepping away. If you never get to that scenario, it's less "CHOOSE" than "COPE". XD I'll take a look at that to make sure the mechanics are working right. What difficulty settings were you using?

On discussing that the Bonannos are more legit than most: I kinda went for the slow reveal on that. The initial encounter's "neutral", meant to be weird for a Hero being approached by the Mob, and then you find out "hey, this isn't that bad" as you go through the next few missions. I dunno; I guess I meant for you to be confused to a small degree, but if it's not that clear beyond the first mish, I might need to rethink that approach.

Let me know the difficulty settings you had, and I'll run the last mish a few times to see if I can duplicate it. Thanks, Muon!

 

Posted

Just the base difficulty: +0/x1/no bosses/no AVs (which made the EB robot into just a boss, and IX into an EB). Monica spawned just before I got to the roof (one floor down), and all the bombs were on the roof. I didn't realize at first that I would be having to escort, so I actually stealthed to Monica (after killing IX) and ended up taking out the family on my way down - which is why I commented that I didn't see any easy way to get her killed, since even doing that, the family wasn't any real threat to her.

Although, to be honest, I'm not sure I would have thought of leading her to IX and getting her killed anyway - in fact, the possibility of getting her killed to fail the mission didn't even occur to me until well afterward. I'm not used to failing objectives on purpose, especially by action instead of inaction. I was all set to have to make a choice, but I wasn't clear about how I was going to go about doing that. Would it be possible to have IX try to impede your escape instead of waiting for you (say, spawn near the beginning after you rescue Monica)? With some appropriate dialogue from IX (and objective bar text), I think that might bring home the possibilities more forcefully to players who hadn't considered that sort of choice. That would, of course, be contingent on the spawn points for IX working out so that the players would be actually forced to get past him on the way out, but at least it would be a way to ensure that the players won't be fighting him without Monica in tow. (By the way, the souvenir, of course, only makes sense if Monica survives. Is it actually possible to have an arc award a different souvenir if the final mission is failed? I can think of one canon arc that does that, but I didn't know if the MA had that ability.)

As far as the 'legit family' thing goes, I'd have to go back and look at the intro dialogue more carefully, I guess. Going for a slow reveal does make sense, but in that case, it might be good to ensure that the hero is provided with what seems like a very good reason to work with them. I know that you played up the 'agree to keep things legal' part, but that only covers part of it, as the hero needs enough motivation to actually take on the job in the first place.

@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.

This is what it means to be a tank!

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino View Post
Would it be possible to have IX try to impede your escape instead of waiting for you (say, spawn near the beginning after you rescue Monica)?
Original versions tried a few options: Ambush doesn't work, much to my ROFLness, when I tried to set up IX as the ambush and I got a full ambush of IXes. That was a kinda NO.

I also tried an if/then spawn setup, but after having it not spawn for me, period, twice... I opted against it. The two objectives seemed more stable, but I'd prefer the if/then setup if I can get it to execute properly. This map's been a frustration to me for spawn issues, but it's the most fitting map for the storyline. =/

I'll give the if/then setup another whirl and ping you on it, try to show you what I had in mind. I may cut the # of bombs from 5 to 3, just in case the counts are throwing off the spawns elsewhere on the map. (If anyone has other suggestions on how to improve spawn reliability for location placement on this map, I'm all ears...)

Quote:
(By the way, the souvenir, of course, only makes sense if Monica survives. Is it actually possible to have an arc award a different souvenir if the final mission is failed? I can think of one canon arc that does that, but I didn't know if the MA had that ability.)
It's not possible. However, I wrote the "fail outro" text with the contact to sum up the experience and the consequences (Leandro has stated that he likes the fail text better... but he's pretty morose). If you'd like to see the fail text, let me know and I'll PM it to you (or you can run thru it and fail the last mish).

I'll mess with the spawnings this weekend, see if I can get it stable. I'm just afraid to report this map for fear of them just removing it.

 

Posted

Nice work Turg.
Ran this with my 42 scrapper, set for 0/1
This arc gave me the feel of an original arc which I liked, good choice of maps, specially the final map. The story was very good; the epilogue tied up everything very nicely and felt like it completed the story. As for the Bonanno’s being legit, I really didn’t realize that at all, thought I was just trying to keep Monica legit. At the end I thought I was supposed to save Monica’s father. Somewhere I missed that he had already been assassinated until I read the epilogue. Not till I read Muon Neutrino posts and your responses that the choice was let Monica live or die. After reading both you posts on the arc I understood the dialog better and could see where you coming from.

In the 2nd mish is Monica suppose to spawn pets and help fight. She kept running up to guys but never did anything.

3rd mish I love the guys saying “please remain stationary” roflmao the first time I read that, freaking awesome.

5th mish first time I ran this I never even saw IX till after I had gotten Monica. Found him on the first floor in a corner room that I had run by earlier. 2nd run he was in the first room with Abrazzia.

Also felt like the 5th mish should have been timed to give it more of a rush feel.


@Garet Jaxs

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by dark_vengence View Post
In the 2nd mish is Monica suppose to spawn pets and help fight. She kept running up to guys but never did anything.
That's correct; I wanted her as a passive escort to the door for that one. Remember, she just got home from college, she's not exactly unpacked.

Quote:
5th mish first time I ran this I never even saw IX till after I had gotten Monica. Found him on the first floor in a corner room that I had run by earlier. 2nd run he was in the first room with Abrazzia.
That part's actually the "best" way to go through the scene, as you should meet Monica first before encountering IX. By design, IX is supposed to spawn "at the back", i.e., the rooftops, but the map just doesn't seem to care...

As per my previous comment with another post, I'm going to tweak that final encounter a bit to make the choice more "clear", and what's at stake. If you walk into IX, you'll see that his escorts are carrying bodybags, with the text implication that Monica's parents are amongst the dead.

Glad you liked my "please remain stationary" line. It's a line that's pretty common, but I first heard it from way, WAY back in the early days of muppetlabs.com, where typing an incorrect URL would net you "Your HTML is malformed. Please remain still. The men in the white coats are coming to collect you."

Still cracks me up.

 

Posted

I got your note in-game the other day, but haven't had a chance to run it yet...

I'm looking forward to running through it.

(I've skipped any of the responses here that might contain spoilers)

---

What I really want to know is: What happened to Ghost in the Machine, part III ?

Did I miss it or have you never completed it?

I really want to know how the story ends.

That's one of the few arcs out there that has actually gotten me emotionally involved in it's resolution...

6000+ levels gained and 8 level 50's
Hello, my name is Soulwind and I have Alt-Itis.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Soulwind View Post
What I really want to know is: What happened to Ghost in the Machine, part III ?

Did I miss it or have you never completed it?

I really want to know how the story ends.

That's one of the few arcs out there that has actually gotten me emotionally involved in it's resolution...
The story is going to end; I just had a A TON of life crises hit me in 2009 after I released Act II, so I had to put writing on the side to get my affairs straight.

(Nothing bad in the long run; my dog needed emergency spine surgery totalling $7K, so there was a big fiscal hit, but it's Thor, and he's worth it, and he's 120% better now; there was my wedding in October, and because of the $7K disappearing some last minute scrabbling from June to Oct to reinvent the wedding in a cheaper, more intimate, and frankly more satisfying format; and, well, the holidays, which having our families in NYC while we lived in DC meant we had to travel to my mom, her dad, her brother, my college bud, and so on, and so on...)

I wrote "IX" over the course of about 5 days, when I found out that Dr. Aeon had made a challenge. I hadn't dipped into MA in months by that point, and the theme of his challenge got me interested. Don't take this as an indication that I've perma-tabled "Ghost" - I haven't. I have a few drafts of Acts III and IV (although admittedly nothing substantial, I got distracted), but I'm hoping that we get some breathing room with MA file size "soon", so I can fix up Act II to where I wanted it to be but couldn't with custom mob limitations.

And yeah, Acts 3 AND 4. I had a (forced) opportunity this month to clean up Act I because of a critical bug, but took the time to smooth out some wrinkles like text corrections, some power balancing, etc. Once the file size fix comes in and I get Act II cleaned up, I'll re-release all of them in a final version format.

 

Posted

Hiya!

I'm a big fan of Turg's from back when AE was shiny and new. Unfortunately, financial constraints forced me to take a year off from the game, but I'm back and was quite pleased to have a chance to play though this mission.

Simply put, I loved it. It takes some common ideas in hero fiction of all stripes ("Is is ok to punish someone for something they allegedly will do? What factors go into making such a decision?" and so forth) and makes a nifty little arc out of it. The dark ending that I ended up with just adds fuel to what can be merely a central trope in a story or a deep philosophical question.

Let us know when GitM III is ready!