In lieu of trying to search through several pages worth of threads to find where the original arc threads were posted, I figured I would consolidate my post-I17 changes in one thread and just give a general rundown of all of the changes I've made. Arc #'s are located in my signature line:
Changes to "The Long Road Back"
- Color formatted the entire arc so that it no longer looks so drab. I finally had the space to do this and it looks much better.
- Slightly altered the appearance of Dr. Louise Symons and tinkered with her powerset so that she gives close to 100% experience, hopefully while removing a power or two that made her very rough for certain ATs to defeat.
- Altered how mission 3 was structured to make it more streamlined and completely removed the ongoing issue with the glowie that would neither blink, glow or make any noise until the escort was taken to the exit.
- Also changed the map of mission 3 to a more predictable one that hopefully will eliminate the occasional issue of having to backtrack. Hopefully, the player will no longer have to do any backtracking at all in this mission and that it will unfold in a linear fashion.
- Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do at the present time about the experience nerfing of mission 4. Because of the way the mission is structured, it apparently counts every time Symons is freed as an 'ally,' so the experience is horribly borked.
- Ditto with mission 5. Even though the OSI extractor you free runs straight to the doorway, she counts as far as experience reduction is concerned.
- Re-added all 6 orphan skins to the 'orphans' group. None of them give any experience, (and were never meant to), but now there is some variety among the children of Heatherford Home in mission 5.
- Created male versions of the Heatherford Guardian lieutenant and the Staff Member minion in the HH Staff group. Both of these do exactly the same things as their female counterparts, so it was mainly a change for aesthetic purposes.
Overall, mission 5 looks much better, but the general reduction in experience makes this a long slog for limited reward at this point. I am loathe to unpublish though, especially since I do not have anything to immediately replace it with. Hopefully, they will institute a more permanent solution to the problem that the ally experience nerf was done to fix soon.
Changes to "The Union of the Mask:"
- Removed the boss flight response from all of the bosses in all of the missions. Enough people have mentioned that this is not fun to counter my predisposition that given the stakes, them fleeing makes sense. At this point, I would rather err on the side of playability and fun.
- Tinkered with the power sets of all of the custom bosses. All of them should give 100% experience down the line except for Marshall Brass. Brass does not because of the mission he is in and there is nothing I can do about it without completely destroying the design of mission 5.
- Altered the look of Bloody Vicious slightly.
- Corrected various typos.
- All mission give full experience, except mission 5, which gives approximately 5% normal experience. The mission is designed to be a running street battle and there are numerous mobs of PPD allies and 2 Paragon heroes that the character could potentially free to assist him against Brass. I do not intend to change this mission until there is an indication that the ally nerf is permanent. There are approximately 50 total plot points in the mission if you include all of the family members you could free, the two heroes, all of the patrols and street battles and Brass himself. Mission 5 took several hours on his own to design and I don't want to lose all of that work only to have the basic problem solved a couple of months down the road if they fix the ally nerf.
There are no changes to "Night Calls the Weaver" at the present time, though I am considering doing a couple of minor things like expanding the level range to 5-14 from its current 5-10 range. I believe the natural limit for the Hellions faction is 14, so I think it could sustain that change without any issues. There are also a few minor typos that I have wanted to fix for awhile, but haven't been able to because it seems that my schedule and the good doctor's are extremely incompatible.
At any rate, all three arcs have generally been well received, though the first two still have a very small number of plays. Give them a try if you haven't had a chance yet and if you have, then take another look... it might be better than the last time you played.
In lieu of trying to search through several pages worth of threads to find where the original arc threads were posted, I figured I would consolidate my post-I17 changes in one thread and just give a general rundown of all of the changes I've made. Arc #'s are located in my signature line:
Changes to "The Long Road Back"
- Color formatted the entire arc so that it no longer looks so drab. I finally had the space to do this and it looks much better.
- Slightly altered the appearance of Dr. Louise Symons and tinkered with her powerset so that she gives close to 100% experience, hopefully while removing a power or two that made her very rough for certain ATs to defeat.
- Altered how mission 3 was structured to make it more streamlined and completely removed the ongoing issue with the glowie that would neither blink, glow or make any noise until the escort was taken to the exit.
- Also changed the map of mission 3 to a more predictable one that hopefully will eliminate the occasional issue of having to backtrack. Hopefully, the player will no longer have to do any backtracking at all in this mission and that it will unfold in a linear fashion.
- Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do at the present time about the experience nerfing of mission 4. Because of the way the mission is structured, it apparently counts every time Symons is freed as an 'ally,' so the experience is horribly borked.
- Ditto with mission 5. Even though the OSI extractor you free runs straight to the doorway, she counts as far as experience reduction is concerned.
- Re-added all 6 orphan skins to the 'orphans' group. None of them give any experience, (and were never meant to), but now there is some variety among the children of Heatherford Home in mission 5.
- Created male versions of the Heatherford Guardian lieutenant and the Staff Member minion in the HH Staff group. Both of these do exactly the same things as their female counterparts, so it was mainly a change for aesthetic purposes.
Overall, mission 5 looks much better, but the general reduction in experience makes this a long slog for limited reward at this point. I am loathe to unpublish though, especially since I do not have anything to immediately replace it with. Hopefully, they will institute a more permanent solution to the problem that the ally experience nerf was done to fix soon.
Changes to "The Union of the Mask:"
- Removed the boss flight response from all of the bosses in all of the missions. Enough people have mentioned that this is not fun to counter my predisposition that given the stakes, them fleeing makes sense. At this point, I would rather err on the side of playability and fun.
- Tinkered with the power sets of all of the custom bosses. All of them should give 100% experience down the line except for Marshall Brass. Brass does not because of the mission he is in and there is nothing I can do about it without completely destroying the design of mission 5.
- Altered the look of Bloody Vicious slightly.
- Corrected various typos.
- All mission give full experience, except mission 5, which gives approximately 5% normal experience. The mission is designed to be a running street battle and there are numerous mobs of PPD allies and 2 Paragon heroes that the character could potentially free to assist him against Brass. I do not intend to change this mission until there is an indication that the ally nerf is permanent. There are approximately 50 total plot points in the mission if you include all of the family members you could free, the two heroes, all of the patrols and street battles and Brass himself. Mission 5 took several hours on his own to design and I don't want to lose all of that work only to have the basic problem solved a couple of months down the road if they fix the ally nerf.
There are no changes to "Night Calls the Weaver" at the present time, though I am considering doing a couple of minor things like expanding the level range to 5-14 from its current 5-10 range. I believe the natural limit for the Hellions faction is 14, so I think it could sustain that change without any issues. There are also a few minor typos that I have wanted to fix for awhile, but haven't been able to because it seems that my schedule and the good doctor's are extremely incompatible.
At any rate, all three arcs have generally been well received, though the first two still have a very small number of plays. Give them a try if you haven't had a chance yet and if you have, then take another look... it might be better than the last time you played.
Thanks
- S12