A Man on a Mission: Khonshu's Revamp of CoH

I know everybody gets good reviews from people, but I thought I'd post this here since so far nobody who has commented in this thread has said much that is supportive of the idea of getting away from clues as a storytelling aid.

You said you were in the TL;DR crowd. Personally, i can't understand why the fairly small amount of text in the average arc is too much trouble for some people, but then it takes all sorts.

I like to read. For me, well-written prose, dialogue, descriptions, it all adds to the quality of a story. Reduce the text and you might as well make a newspaper mission.

I've played some fun newspaper missions, mind you. But On balance, i prefer arcs with clues.

Eco

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

My Arcs
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Mission Architect Handyman

Well ... I do read. I usually spend most of my day reading. But when I play a game (that is not a text game), I like to play.

I don't think this game is designed to give us text in a fashion that meshes well with game play. I don't even like the contact exposition, and would do away with it if I could.

For example, if instead of the team leader journeying to Atlas to get a block of exposition from Azuria, I'd prefer it if we could journey to an instance where Azuria is present, and by clicking on one thing or another we might trigger a sequence of dialog / animation bits where she speaks and gestures to all of the team that is present.

And if the leader communicates by cellphone, then I'd like for a small cellphone window to automatically splash up on the screens of everyone on the team.

As for clues, what I'd prefer is that there either be text clues that automatically pop-up on everyone's screens, or cutscene type clues that everyone on the team sees.

I'd particularly like to use cutscene type clues at the start or end of arcs to provide a sense of prologue and epilogue.

EDIT: Oh, and another form of "clue" I'd like to use would be a narrative pop-up that could appear as a consequence of any event, not just mission entry or exit.

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

Yes, that's pretty much my view. If someone is AFK and something happens that they miss, then either the team fills them in or they don't know what's going on.

If the story is decent, it shouldn't be all that difficult to fill someone in. There should be a logical progression of events. If the story is not so good ... well, maybe it doesn't matter if you go AFK.

I don't like fanfic, and I can well imagine your sense of dread at the thought of hours upon hours of chained cutscenes filled with tea-sipping drivel.

War Witch: "My heart is heavy at the thought of this terrible misfortune. It is extremely, truly terrible." Sips tea.

Ms. Liberty: Looks at wall clock. Looks away. Looks at watch. Scratches itch near hem of skirt. "Yeah. I know what you mean."

It sounds like he's not opposed to the clicking per se, but the stopping of the action to read a block of text, when he'd rather have it thrown at him line by line in the midst of the exciting punching and blasting.

This is a good question. The difference is small, but important.

A narrative pop-up is always brief. It could pop up as a result of any trigger. It appears automatically. It demands immediate attention. It goes away with a click.

A clue, on the other hand, can be long. A number of events can trigger them, causing them to collect in your clue basket. They don't demand immediate attention, so they are best used to give background information that can be read at leisure.

Narrative pop-ups can be used to inform the player of things they need to know at the moment that may be inobvious during the course of play. An example already used in the game would be, "You need a key to open this door."

Clues are not a replacement for narrative pop-ups. Clues are there to tell you about the things that were not revealed by the contact and were not apparent during play.

If a story depends a lot on clues, it is best if the player is solo. Then they can take breaks, read clues, and grasp the story.

However, in a team-oriented game, it is often inconvenient to read the clues as they come up, or even between missions. Usually this is because other members of the team have already played this content and know the story, or they are primarily tactics-oriented players (as opposed to being primarily story-oriented). In this case, a player usually can't read the clues till the play session has ended.

While some players will always like clues, my design goal is to have as much story shown as possible, and as much story displayed automatically as possible, so that even tactically-oriented players can be aware of the story.

Let me try to illustrate this another way. Let's say we have an issue of a comic book where the story is told through all the art panels with action, dialog, and narrative captions. Then let's have two pages in the middle of the comic that have no art, just blocks of text. Virtually all of the audience will read the portions of the comic that have the art, dialog, and captions. A much smaller subset will also read the two pages of prose.

It makes sense to understand your audience and to write to them. So you tell as complete a story as you can through the panels of art, dialog, and captions. This story is told in a very economical fashion, with as much communicated by the art as possible. Then, if you want to add supplementary information that is not absolutely required - it's really just for the hardcore fans - you can put it in the two pages of prose at the center of the issue.

My goal, in writing missions in architect, is to tell the story as much as possible through the art and action, and to use the other tools (contact exposition, dialog, and pop-ups) only as needed, with an eye to economy. Clues could be used - and maybe I would use a few now that the file size has been increased - but the story should never depend on these. Clues would be like the section of prose that is optional content composed for the small population of hardcore fans.

The way I see it, glowies should only be used if they are essential to either the plot or the game play. The appearance of the glowie should fit the purpose. There may be some text associated with the glowie describing the interaction, but other than that ... yes, I don't insert glowies just to provide supplementary information (clues).

I can't argue with your instincts. Having only body bags to represent fallen bodies is a shame. We should have the ability to make prone, inactive spawns: dead bodies.

You'll note that devs have the ability to put dead bodies on the floor. That's the right way to do it. Hopefully we'll get that ability in MA. [Edited to preserve NDA.]

Actually, the devs have both clues and pop-ups in their engine because they're not the same thing. They don't serve the same function.

That's why we don't get clues telling us we need a key for that door.

Clues are not bad. They're just easy to misuse. One of my big complaints about the game, particularly the content from the first few issues, is that the clues were poorly used.

What the devs did wrong is they used clues to tell the story, and everything else the players saw and did was more or less inconsequential. Contacts would say, "Go bust Unlucky Pete," and you'd enter a warehouse and furiously click on your power tray for a while, and that would be it.

I'm saying we can do a better job of telling story at the moment of play, as opposed to telling story via clues that are optionally read after play.

Clues are limited to 100 characters. That's less than a freaking tweet.

But they still 'interrupt' the 'gameplay story', impede the view of the action (some would argue to a bigger extent since they're in the middle not off to one side as a clues window could be) and require a mouseclick to make them go away again. If length of text is your main bugbear, i don't see why you don't have a 'no long clues in my arcs' stance italics mine, since they can also be as short as the MAuthor wants them to be. The MAuthor should be able to dictate when they trigger as much as they'd be able to positionn the triggering of your narrative popups. Clues demanding imediate attention is dependent on whether or not they give information that's relevant there and then, surely? If I meet a boss, all alone in the first room of a medium sized map and the story is that after I defeat him I find a letter on him from a previously presumed ally saying that he's going to ambush me later in the misison, then a. I'll not really be wasting any time or effort reading it before moving on to the next spawn, because nothing's likely to be happening near me, and b. when i meet said 'ally', I won't be surprised when he attacks me. How would you get that particular story development over using your current system? Do you just avoid storylines that are too complex to tell just using dialogue, chat messages and entry and exit popups?

So can clues (but in the MA, the 'you need a key to open this door' message is irrelevant because we can't do that yet.0 Since the virgin clue field is blank, surely Clues are there to tell the Player anything that the MAuthor wants to tell him?

I'm a rabid hater of blanket statements, lol, and I have to say here that this is entirely dependent on the etiquette of the players you're playing with. I usually solo because I like to take my time, go AFK to make an Anna Kournikova, chat in the MA Arc Finder Channel, whatever, but even on PuGs i've found plenty of occasions where the leader says 'clue' every now and then, and the team stops (after the next spawn, if necessary - nobody's advocating immediate cessation) for 30 seconds while those that want to read the clue that's popped up. I personally would leave a team after one mission if i was forced in some way to wait till the mission was over to read the clues that dropped in it. I've never been kicked from a team because i like to read the clues as they drop. The most clashing of approaches I've ever encountered is people who say
np-read away, I'll carry on fighting' and do so while I read the clue, then catch up.

I appreciate this, and it's an admirable aim to go for the minimalist approach like this, but you're basically reducing the amount of text you can have in your arcs. You might not say that equates to reducing the amount of story, but I'd say you were.

Which makes me think...ann interesting experiment might be to attempt to make astroy arc with no text at all...I wonder if pure mechanics could be used to deliver a narrative successfully. Comics with no text have been done...hmm...

Right. So to illustrate your 'Clues are bad' stance, you give an example of TWO PAGES of prose? Way to exagerrate. We don't have enough space in a clue field to deliver two pages of text. One clue at max is going to be a paragraph, ansd then the player can get back to some action.

I have definitely read arcs fairly groaning under the weight of dozens of portly clues per mission, where scrolling to the top of my clue list after the 4th mission took forever. My eyes have glazed over and the dropping of yet another flowery overly-long pointless piece of exposition.

But everything in moderation, eh? Too many clues is bad, I agree. Clues that are too long is also bad, yes. But none at all, simply because they're clues? I can't see an actual good reason for your dislike of them. They are boxes with text in them that appear during an arc when an MAuthor-dictated event triggers them.

In comics, there are dialogue bubbles, art, and captions. You're being a bit disengenious here by saying that our Clues are the mythical two-page wall o text you mentioned up a bit, because in comics, the captions do what our clues do, which is give extra information.

rather than this, it seems to me that you're writing comics with no captions, just the fairly limited art that can be portrayed in the MA ,and speech bubbles.

Your definitions of what things should be used for in the MA have me scratching my head. You say 'Clues should only be used for supplementary info, and I don't need any supplementary info in my arcs, so i won't use clues'. This seems circular to me. Clues don't have to be used for just supplemetary info.

I have an arc in which, in the final mission, the villain is talking to the heroes over a loudspeaker system as they progress through the map towards the showdown with him. This is not a brief statement or isnutl or what have you - it's a long monologue that is designed narratively to build up ternsion and reveal the truth behind the villains plans yadda yadda.

Wether or not it succeeds storywise is not relevant for this discussion. Some people love it, some hate it, and i admit that the logic of the final Reveal needs a rethink someday.

What's important here is that the villain is not anywhere near the heroes for most of the mission, but he is talking to them and they can hear him. In a comic, this would be represented with art of loudspeakers with crackly speech bubbles coming from them, maybe a boxout every few panels etc, a cutaway to the gloating villain, a speech bubble from an intercom in the distance of a panel featuring a hero fighting the minions etc. I don't think this scenario would be a particular surprise to see in a superhero comic. In the game, the only way we can do this is by clue drops. I use 15 of them, in fact. Each one is a short paragraph, and then the player moves on to the next fight. In a comic, 15 panels with speech in them (as well as the art; would not be unusual. How would you portray this scenario using your method? If you limit yourself to dialogue, then plot devices like loudspeakers, radios, things read in books or seen in photographs, they're all off-limits to you. Don't you think this is limiting?

but we don't, and i was wrong. Well, each to their own, but I respectfully disagree with you.

Eco

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."