Mission Weekly

I have a lot of ideas in my head and really needed a creative outlet for them, and the Architect system is really good for that.

I've started a project called Mission Weekly, which will be my attempt to provide one new Architect Mission each week, for every week that I can until I blow up or whatever.

444679 is the first one.
I called it Fastball Special, I'm sure you know where the title's inspiration came from.

It revolves around a baseball player for Paragon City's team, the Paragon Capes, who just lost game 6 of the playoff series against the Rogue Island Cowls.

(Even though there are serious limitations for male characters to look like baseball players, I did what I could)

I know I'm not the first person to create a character like this but I think you'll find the story of the mission interesting. I did what I could to add a few easter eggs for those so inclined.

Since this is the first one, I'm looking for as much feedback as possible.

And if you're interested in joining in, go right ahead!
The only rules I suppose would be that you have to add MW and a date to your mission so people know roughly when it was made, (or is that there already?), and do what you can to work around bugs in the system.

Mission 2 in the arc has one glaringly obvious bug: Nolan shows up multiple times (unless the architect system hides the duplicates) Because I can't set an ambush to only have one ally show up. Gah. Even though it is wrong and messed up, it tells a better story so I'm leaving it that way.

There's also a bug in that mission where sometimes one or more of the girls will get stuck at the entrance and won't leave. it happens when they freak out mid-door opening. I was worried about it at first and even /bugged it, but you can still complete the mission if it happens. Just pretend like you're not abandoning some poor girl in the middle of a big scary warehouse.

By all means play it, enjoy it, and downvote it into oblivion. I know I can do better and look forward to challenging myself.

Interesting project. Good luck, and I'll make sure to play the arc as soon as possible.

Hah, beat you to it Fred!

Er...anyways, noble effort but there were some things that could be cleaned up. Commented on these in-game. That said, I would recommend it to others.

Another trick is to "front-load" all the important stuff. Set all the required objectives to spawn at the front of the map and the player won't have to walk through three mostly empty floors to finish the mission. This will only work on maps where the spawn points work properly, though, so it's a bit of a crapshoot at the moment.

I used this trick in the fourth mission of "Evolve or Die", if you want to see an example.

I didn't think that each girl needed a different look but I thought that they all could use different dialogue. It's time-consuming to create seven different hostage objectives instead of just setting one of them to repeat 7 times, so I understand why you didn't do that.

Another thing you can do is make their dialogue more generic. Instead of saying the exact same thing they could just say "Thanks!" or scream "AAAH!" and run away. That wouldn't seem quite as weird as having them all say exactly the same sentence.

I also noticed that they seem to be allies instead of hostages. They run away and when they get out of range they stop and say something, and when you get near them they scold you for leaving them alone. That's distracting and could be confusing for a player who might think he's supposed to lead them to the door.

Yeah, actually, that happened to me, but I thought other than when they bug out, it makes them cute.

It's also funny when you rescue them all at the end in one big group and lead the whole family out the door.

I was afraid if I front-loaded in that map that the player might skip right past the boss and get lost on one of those other 4 floors. :P yes I did that once, but in a different mission.

It does bug me that there are a lot of mission objectives that will not say their "player in range but not aggroed yet" dialogue until you attack them, causing a big flood of dialogue in the chat window right when combat starts, so there's no way you can follow along with it. Had to keep the dialogue very simple for that.

New Mission up!
Week Two: Destroy the Workweek!
(just in time for Labor Day, lol)

The Weekend and the workweek have waged war against each other for what seems like an eternity. That war has just taken an ugly turn. Saturday has been kidnapped! You've got to head to the frontlines of this war, and put an end to the villainy of the workweek!

Caution: custom enemies out the wazoo, and your build may not be solo friendly for it.
missions 1 and 2 contain elite bosses that may require a pack of inspirations. mission 4 contains some collectable items which can be very annoying if you (like me) have no sound, and mission 5 is a sort of humorous reward. Hope you enjoy this week's installment.

Next week, I will do some villain content! Or rogue, haven't decided which...

Mission Weekly Week Three: Net Neutrality Must Die!
(you're gonna want a group for this)

The first villainous arc for Mission Weekly, it's guaranteed to be evil! (One hundred fifteen percent guaranteed)

id: 450291

Please let me know what you think when you get a chance.

Update: 10/13/2010
Mission weekly is on hiatus for now. I've missed my deadlines due to circumstances beyond my control. Unemployment is a full-time job. :P