Rogue Transmission #456663 - Directed feedback request.

So, cleaning up my one and only Arc that's been mulling around in various stages of completion for a while, I've run in to some specific quandries.

This was submitted for the third challenge, however it was a bit rushed to meet the deadline, and there are still things I'm not happy with. Currently, I'm looking for feedback on some very specific points. I welcome any and ALL feedback, but I'd appreciate any insight in to the points I've listed here.

***SPOILERS FOLLOW. Please play the arc before reading these.***

Overall Design/Mission intros: The goal was to take an arc and involve the (Heroic) player in a moral dilemma. I play a lot of arcs, but often I find that the sense of the player's actions are less important than the wants or needs of the contact. The overall goal for the arc was to place the heroic player in a position where each accepted mission felt like a choice, and that stopping the chain of events may feel like a better idea than mindlessly hitting the accept mission button. As silly as it might sound, I wanted to involve the player with a character as emotionally as possible, and then ask the player to betray that character. I wanted every mission to feel like a difficult choice. I wanted to communicate to the player that sometimes the cost of doing the right thing means doing things you're not proud of. Did you, as a hero, feel ashamed of your actions through the arc? Did you feel connected to the Jane Character? Did you feel like your actions and decisions mattered? If not, what may have made this arc more personal?

Mission 1: Originally, this mission was populated by Knives of Artemis. A lot of the people who took it through in test simply hated the stacking caltrops from the final ambush event. In addition, the way trops like to stick around made picking up Jane a bit of a chore, as the player would end up wasting the knives and standing around waiting for the trops to die before they could move on. To compromise, I replaced them with a custom faction that serves the same thematic purpose. The problem is that they show up, and are never explored or explained. This I hate. I'd like any opinions on returning the Knives to the map, or other solutions that would make this first bit a little smoother.

Mission 2: This one is usually a love it or hate it for people. Some people really hate babysitting combat NPCs. The design goal here was balancing Jane so that she could take care of herself, but that she'd be weak enough that the player would have to take care of her. This is an expression in game terms of trying to elicit a sense of camraderie between the player and Jane. I felt that this was important to the arc as a whole, as I needed the player to take responsibility for Jane in an emotional sense before the following two missions. In gameplay terms, this meant asking the player to do so literally. The first few variations people tested had a much weaker Jane, but I got a lot of complaints that she died too easy, failing the mission. I beefed her up, but she wasn't extensively tested. Do you feel she was too hard or too easy to take care of?

Mission 3: Like mission 2, I'm relying on gameplay mechanics to move the story forward. When the player is asked to betray Jane by longbow, and accepts, I want the player to own that betrayal. Thus, I've designed Jane in this mission in an obvious state of unreadiness, and I'm asking the player to beat hear while she attempts to run rather than have a challenging fight. Was she easy enough to catch and finish off? Was the dialogue effective while you did so? Did you feel sorry for her? Were you suprised at the mission exit text?

Finale: Unfortunately, Mission 4 got the least amount of work. I spent most of the testing time on this one tweaking Jane, but the map is admittedly too big, and hunting for her is a chore. Simple question here. For the setting, what would you say is a more idea map for what is supposed to be a short trip through a wrecked section of city culminating in the final fight. Additionally, how did you feel upon completing it? Did you feel like you'd done something wrong, done something right, or was it a moral grey area?

Thanks in advance for any feedback

I'll just comment on something I remember thinking about when I played it: the first mission really should use Knives of Artemis. The custom enemies aren't exactly an improvement, with their spamming of web grenades and smoke grenades and other annoying powers. I remember wondering who these guys were and why it was a custom group.

Thanks Fred! Out of curiosity, what AT/powerset did you play it with?

I had a thought, perhaps put the knives back in, but have the hostage group consist of a few customs to solve the sticky caltrops problem. That way people don't end up sitting around waiting for the caltrops to clear before they can start moving back to the door.

First time I played it with a Defender, second time with a Scrapper.