Old Time Fairy Tale Treasure Hunt! Thrills & Chills for all!

Old Time Fairy Tale Treasure Hunt MA# 149250

This is the story of high adventure, lost treasure, ancient artifacts, and underworld wheels and deals.

I am pretty sure I have all the bugs out, I've been working hard to put surprise twists in the story line and mix up the kind of foes you find. Come and give this a looksee. I think you might like what you find.

Arc 149250, Old Time Fairy Tale Treasure Hunt, @Green Lama

It's been around for quite a while, but only has 24 plays. I know that feeling. Still a Work in Progress. Family and a custom group, for level 45+. Extreme Bosses! It's potentially quite short. 3 missions, two unique maps and a small map. Villainous. I'll provide a massive dump of potential edits that I found as I played through.

The contact has no description (Story Settings), but is a CoT called Diviner Maros. Maros wants me to grab a treasure horde, giving one piece to him. A divining gadget that nobody can use without going mad, and he wants to destroy it. That doesn't sound plausible. If it's so utterly useless, why bother to destroy it?

First mission - off to the tavern to get a map. Or, in CoH terms, off to the casino to find the treasure hunter. M1 entry pop-up: Embiance -> Ambience or Ambiance ; it's -> its The occupants are all rather cynical creations. Each comes from an organization that is described cynically. Perhaps they could be more like individuals who happen to patronize a bar. Pretty in Pink seems more like an individual. Ninja name: Ninjas -> Ninja. Bugsy description: nick name -> nickname. The Scorpions name: The Scorpions -> Scorpion (or A Scorpion). The Scorpions description: To bad -> Too bad ; there -> their ; hair style.s -> hairstyles. Family battle or patrol dialog: keep and eye out for -> keep an eye out for. Not sure why, from the beginning, I am going after a casino safe, when I should really be looking for Lucky Pete. There hasn't been anything to explain the connection. Safe opening Clue: reciepts -> receipts ; owe's -> owes The return pop-up says I was successful because I survived. But that was never really why I went in there. Return text: Let's -> Lets ; owe's -> owes The return message suggests I check out Family hangouts, since the Family is looking for him. That assumes the Family has found him, and not killed him already. He could also be not with the Family, in any place on Earth. Sounds too much like a "random invasion" that will just happen to work.

Mission 2 subtitle: learn's -> learns. There's a better explanation this time for why to visit the Family (someone spotted Pete). Diviner Maros is "the one to do it" [rip off a Family enterprise]. This seems utterly out of character for the Crown of Thorns. It's a timed mission - I wasn't given any warning of this. Some people might select the mission with the plan to logout and come back to it later, so a warning is generally expected for timed missions. It's an awfully similar map to the last one. Dr. Medula Oblongata description: scientists -> scientist Why is there a Snake in here? Just figured out why I keep getting stuck - whatever custom critter has Mud Pots power, it sure is annoying, and they seem to be quite common. After I rescue the hostage (Pete) it just says "to escape with" in the Nav. Could be more clear than that. When Pete gets to the door: Common -> Come on When I return from mission 2, Diviner Maros says he doesn't know where the treasure was taken. But I do know that already. Am I assumed to not tell him? Perhaps my exit pop-up should say that I plan to keep him in the dark, if that's the case.

The third mission has the default "Accept" string, whereas the other missions were more creative. M3 send-off: i get -> I get ; forsee -> foresee It's another timed mission with no warning. Entry pop-up: It's -> Its Why, if the chest contents are teleported away, does it take forever to empty each one? An objective to defeat a Magus has appeared - any explanation why?

For a lop-level villain arc, I didn't feel particularly dastardly at all. I got my photo in the paper, and some kind of medal. The story has a rough outline plot, but the details seem to be a bunch of things that sounded like a good idea on their own. I don't get a sense of an integrated plot. But hopefully the details above will help towards that end. It would have been nice if the Eye was something more than just a McGuffin (arbitrary thing that supposedly provides motives for going places). Perhaps if I were to pursue it for myself? The arc doesn't have a souvenir.

Cheers, airhead

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Thanks for the review.

Some of these are issues I've been working on but have not found what I think is a viable solution. I.E., Work in Progress. Some are ones I missed because of over familiarization. I know what I meant, but I didn't get it down on "paper". Thus the value of an intellegent reviewer or good editor.

One problem is that I've never found an adaquate first map. I wanted a small club like a casino, but when I do that, the mob distribution is never what I remember from playing those maps as done by the devs.

Cynicism in patron descriptions is a failing of mine. Unfortunately, CoH does not have a generic "ruffian" mix. A casino or dance club has to be patronaged by a number of different people. Not all Family or whatever.

I worked on this in the second arc, which is why I included patrols of several different villain groups in order to add differentiation to the mix of people you could encounter. Off duty Crey, Carnies out on the town, wandering Freaks, some Snakes trying to keep to the shadows. Here I ran into level difficulties. I wanted Warriors, Skulls, etc, but they only came in low level types.... sigh.

As I understand it now, I can have my Warriors, etc, and I may change out the custom group for the old favorites. If I do, I can maybe stage a few gang turf fights and such to further mix things up.

Part of my objective was to mix things up. I wanted to remind people that there are factions all over the place, and they have to interact sometimes. I didn't really succeed in this. Have to work on it. I also wanted to mix things up in a game sence, having a variety of mobs to fight, rather than having the same old thing in the entire adventure. That sometimes seems to me to be the weekness of CoH. You go into a location where there should be half a dozen potential enemies, and you find only Council or only Carnies. Only a few times are villain groups encountered in mixed bags, and that mostly in CoH early missions in Atlas, King's Row, etc...

I think I carry this off a bit better in part three with the various factions being called/hired to evaluate the magical dingus and possibly bid on it. I need to punch up the dialog in order to make that plot point clearer. Working on it.

Again, thanks very very much for your input.

I've already emplemented several changes, including dialog changes, and I'm looking for a better map for part one, either that or a less ambitious concept for part one. Also, looking at changing Maros out for somebody else. Maybe a custom guy or one more likely to want to be benevolent.