City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Rayonn's critique thread

Bubbawheat

By Bubbawheat,
Posted on: 2011-02-26 21:52 in Mission Architect

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayonn View Post
I never thought of that.
My stalker was the first AT I really 'got', so he's the one I explored the game with when I started, which lead me to discovering this handy way of looking around without worrying about getting grease-spotted.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayonn View Post
Yeah. Looking back at this arc I think there were times that I started subconsciously writing for my RP group. They would know this already, but I can't really expect a general audience to.
Exactly.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayonn View Post
Why are there humans in space? Ask Robert Holmes. (Ok, I doubt he was the one who came up with the idea, but out of the Doctor Who I've seen, 'The Carnival of Monsters' seems most explicitly to have humans in space in the present.) I really don't know where they came from.
That's one ep I haven't seen. I think some sort of explanation would help.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayonn View Post
Hmm. I'm actually thinking of either removing this mission entirely, or making it the beginning of the nightmare sequence.
I like the idea of moving it to the beginning of nightmare missions, yeah.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayonn View Post
Another example of where I slipped into writing for an audience that's familiar with Cleos' personality. There's no way you could know this (and I'm not sure how Davids knew), but you'd have had to lock him in the Zig to keep him from helping the player fight Jackson.
Ah, that makes sense, just explain it to the player and it'll work that way.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayonn View Post
You aren't actually supposed to know who 'she' is---it's just supposed to sound rather surreal. Does it work, or did it leave you agonizing over what the dialogue was referring to?
More the latter, because it seemed to be so hinting at something.

Let me know when you've updated it and I'll give it another shot.

 

Posted

Review of When the Words Stop, by @Clave Dark 5
Aemilia Lacera, 42 KM/Inv Brute, +1/x2 (I just soloed Twilight’s Son’s arc at this difficulty.)

Mission 1:

Sometimes reviewing an arc is no fun, because you read a great creepy intro like this, and have to write: I think you left out a word from ‘I’ve always magical as…”
And ‘components’ is misspelled.

The Haunted Robots are tough, given that I lack any defense or resistance to Psi. Oh well.

The dialogue and clues were well written. There’s something about your word choice that really sets up the atmosphere.

Mission 2:
‘pleasantly’ is misspelled in the send-off dialogue.

Your names for the repurposed enemies are better than the originals, I think.

Emily seems really unhinged. The bit about Valerie Gaul being in that pond sound like something out of Neil Gaiman. (recognize is misspelled in that clue)


Mission 3:
This was amazingly good. The process of elimination that led up to the semi-reveal of what happened to Emily really built up some suspense. The distractions also added some nice flavor.

Mission 4:
Did you purposely misspell recognize then?

There are a few twists in this mission, which I liked.


Overall:
Well, really the only fault I can find with this is that it needs proofreading. There are a few spelling errors, missing words, and other typos.

In terms of story, I would say it’s simply superb. This was a short review simply because I didn’t have anything to complain about and didn’t want to spoil anything.

If I list the works of fiction that I want to compare this to, I end up listing something by pretty much every one of my favorite authors. Bravo.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayonn View Post
Mission 1:

Sometimes reviewing an arc is no fun, because you read a great creepy intro like this, and have to write: I think you left out a word from ‘I’ve always magical as…”
And ‘components’ is misspelled.

The Haunted Robots are tough, given that I lack any defense or resistance to Psi. Oh well.

The dialogue and clues were well written. There’s something about your word choice that really sets up the atmosphere.
Thanks for sticking with the arc despite the word problems!

I could blame my numerous edits being eaten, I could blame that screen problem where sometimes you type and the cursor disappears off the end of the line and the keystrokes don't appear until you set the cursor down elsewhere, but... I probably messed up that given example while tweaking my wording and accidentally dropped "been". I had planned to get on today and spellcheck the whole thing and double check for dropped words, but... well... you know, no server access. I'm going out of town tomorrow for the next 10 days or so and I won't have access to the game to fix these small details, sadly. Hopefully anyone else interested will ignore the small flubs in favor of the story.

The Haunted Robots didn't give me much problem, but I was play-testing it on basic settings - that usually results in just three foes in each group. I know some people like to be forewarned about psychic attacks for the reason you mentioned (no resistance or Def to psy), so that's why I did drop the warning on the arc's thread.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayonn View Post
Mission 2:
‘pleasantly’ is misspelled in the send-off dialogue.

Your names for the repurposed enemies are better than the originals, I think.

Emily seems really unhinged. The bit about Valerie Gaul being in that pond sound like something out of Neil Gaiman. (recognize is misspelled in that clue)
Nope, spelling is not my strong point, nor is order-perfect typing - I'm an idea man, dammit! Anyways, I'm glad the story is working for you, a lot of those edits I kept adding was to try and find just the right tone and terms.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayonn View Post
Mission 3:
This was amazingly good. The process of elimination that led up to the semi-reveal of what happened to Emily really built up some suspense. The distractions also added some nice flavor.
All good, that's exactly what I was after.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayonn View Post
Mission 4:
Did you purposely misspell recognize then?

There are a few twists in this mission, which I liked.
(em plot) Yeah, Emily's the terrible speller, not me! (/em plot)

If I had done that on purpose, I'd have probably included a [sic]; again, my bad on that.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rayonn View Post
Overall:
Well, really the only fault I can find with this is that it needs proofreading. There are a few spelling errors, missing words, and other typos.

In terms of story, I would say it’s simply superb. This was a short review simply because I didn’t have anything to complain about and didn’t want to spoil anything.

If I list the works of fiction that I want to compare this to, I end up listing something by pretty much every one of my favorite authors. Bravo.
Glad it worked for you, you seem to have "gotten" what I was after. I've failed on this before (see Dead 6) for some players, judging by the comments I've gotten, but I'm pretty happy when even just a few "get" my point.

Thanks for the review!