Black as Midnight (#482914) - Finally Done?

Please allow this thread to fade away, confining anything related to my arcs and updates in a new, single thread ---> Here

Thread now irrelevent, started up seperate thread for updates and whatnot.

Thanx to @BackFire, @Zamuel, @Chimp, @lizinohio, @FredrikSvanberg, @Geveo, @PW, @GlaziusF and anyone who provided me critical feedback or testing to get this to an enjoyable and close to "Final" status.

@Glazius

Running this on the original low-20s broadsword/shield scrapper, still +0/x2 with bosses on. I’ll try not to comment on anything that seems like it hasn’t changed.

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Hmm. Did you change the briefing? This new contact briefing text is kinda hard to read. Too dark.

...for some reason the bug-the-contact text has this this odd “in person” and “cell phone” section that hasn’t shown up yet. The labels on those are very clear but the text itself is still muddy blue.

Looks like the escort is noncombat this time. That’s good.

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Yeah, not really digging this briefing. Now I have to keep track of everybody’s text colors?

It does kind of a good job of emulating the idea of having an entire squad to talk to, but there’s still the part where I have to reconcile that with only clicking on one guy.

Right after popping Brother Dayless, I run into a demon the Circle have summoned. I manage to take him down with the last of my health and reserves.... and then he self-resurrects?

In the ten seconds it takes to get my mouse over to the rez power, he has completely demolished Brother Dayless. I think perhaps he is pitched a bit high.

...is it the Willpower rez? That one gives you a sizable hit and damage boost after you get back up.

Anyway, the Circle here are working with the black zombies, and I pass by at least one boss-class specimen of them, who has a big maul and... poison spew? Poison is some really potent individual debuffs.

The disciples show up when Tormas is on low health. Pretty sizable group, looks like.

The ending clue tells me that Tormas namedropped somebody called Black Maverick, but I don’t think I was exposed to that name. ...the text color is the same as Raven’s speech, and the Tome of Alteration is the same color as Deadfall’s.

This is kind of a problem with using a lot of text colors: beyond six or so they all run together.

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Er, hang on. Apparently I can somehow get out of this fog eyes portal cell phone depleting situation and tag back to my contact?

It’s kind of a shame there isn’t anything investigable in the Midnighter’s Club aside from the mask. For setting if nothing else.

The mask is called the Spirit of “Me’tuka”. His description mentions something about those who walk the easy path suffering the consequences. For some reason I imagine this is supposed to be a reference to what he was in life, but the name is completely unfamiliar.

Ah. She. Always hard to tell with these names. And lack of body.

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Okay, so after the experience in the Midnighters I am apparently teleported to somewhere completely different.

Ah, a pantheon cave... with another one of those willpower demons. Fun.

Anyway, the spirit of death here is labeled a spirit of life that according to its description looks like a feathered dragon.

...uh.

You might actually be able to do that with the feather cape.

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Still don’t like this map, but it does have one advantage. The end room is closed off so patrols won’t be in there. I’ma just pop on Super Speed and run run run through the whole thing.

On the plus side, the disciples do have that “wisp” aura about them so I can actually see them in this cave.

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Storyline - **. There’s some good work done fleshing out the motivations and consolidating the enemy groups so that the dark zombies and the shadow Circle and the nether disciples all appear to be on the same page. I do end this arc with a much clearer picture of what’s going on

But at the same time, pretty much the entirety of the briefings and chatter in the first two missions are used to set up the little group of Midnighters who’ve come into Dark Astoria, and the problem with that is that they’re aggressively written out of the story come mission three. They stop mattering.

And given that they’ve only started mattering in mission one, that’s basically only enough time for me to start to appreciate these characters. It makes my getting chosen to guard the barrier between Lifeside and Deadside feel even more contrived since that kinda seems like something the Midnighters might know about or be interested in, but as that plot starts ramping up I can’t really get in touch with them at all.

Design - *. This arc does a lot of great work with visual design and technical features. That’s not why this rating has nosedived.

This rating has nosedived because this arc came the closest of any arc I’ve ever played in the Mission Architect to achieving complete separation of mission and narrative.

I can kind of understand collecting all the clues into one big start clue and one big end clue, from a coherency perspective. But the net effect of all of this is that I followed the directions in the navbar until I saw mission complete and then looked in the clues window to see what I had actually managed to do.

System text and NPC dialogue are both important tools of scene-setting, and they’re certainly used here, but they only stick around as long as the chat buffer doesn’t scroll them off. There isn’t a bright line between the two extremes: the mission as a participatory narrative, and the mission as an obstacle course that must be navigated to receive the next part of the narrative. But when I don’t actually create the narrative through clues as part of the mission, it tends to shade toward the latter extreme.

Gameplay - **. The finale is still the finale as it was. The wisp aura helps a little to pick out the enemy group, but the cave itself is still the navigational nightmare with one fixed solution. There’s no reason not to just stealth to the end and ignore everything, which I’m pretty sure is the opposite of what you want to happen.

Also the new demons with the Willpower rez are insanely punishing bosses, and while technically optional they’re fought in such tight quarters and have such range that they may as well not be.

Detail - ***. Colors, colors, colors. Briefings use fonts that are often too dark and hard to read, and color is used as a pure highlight and an indicator of the narrative source pretty interchangeably, which makes it hard to tell at a glance what a given color is supposed to mean.

There are CoT spectral demons and a Pantheon mask which are notionally on my side, but the Circle and Pantheon models also appear in enemy groups. The demons and the mask are supposed to be something different -- in the mask’s case drastically different -- from just their models, but just having that clarification in the description isn’t enough.

Overall - **. The narrative has been clarified. But it’s been done in such a way as to pull the narrative out of the mission. That makes the narrative harder to follow, as it comes in fits and starts, and it makes the missions less engaging.

Thread now irrelevent, started up seperate thread for updates and whatnot.

Had a long response that got lost during "Preview" and not up to writing it all again.

Too much to comment about that can be summed up as such:

"Thank you for a re-review of my arc and I promise I will not be asking for another for this. It's clear to me now that my writing style will not be to your liking, and I must accept that and continue on with the best of what I feel you commented about.

I want to apologize for the Nether Demon and not getting the change in before you played. That was not an intended "hazing".

Main notes otherwise include "I feel you missed all the foreshadowing", "This is not a be-all end-all arc, it is an Intro Arc", "Objectives are indeed intended to be quick after first mission, as I don't want you to be stuck in my arc beyond the scope of what you want" and "What a few colored texts does to you, Walls of White do to me."

Keep up the great work, GlaziusF. Sorry mine is a "Fail" to you.

Some thoughts after playing the arc, then sleeping on it:

* I kinda lost my way in the story starting around mission 3, where it seemed like trippy things started happening but without much explanation, and this feeling persisted until the end of the arc. Visually, a lot of interesting things occurred, but I didn't understand what was going on.

* This is partially due to the unusual structure for clues, with a big info dump at the start and end of each mission, and no clues along the way. This is an interesting mechanism, but if you want to go with this, I think you need the objectives and the character dialog to more clearly tell the story. I agree with Glazius's comment that it felt like I was following the objectives that popped up in the nav bar, but did not have a clear understanding of what they meant.

* Regarding the lengthy begin/end clues, they seem organized in bullet point format, which feels rather sterile and sharply at odds with the dream quest mood that I believe your story is trying to set. Is it possible you can provide this exposition in a more organic manner?

* For some reason I keep thinking about that friendly BP mask and keep wondering what it's story was. (I think it was briefly touched on during the arc, but I didn't get a complete mental picture.) Maybe that's a good thing, though, to keep it mysterious. I dunno.

Anyway, best of luck, hope some of this helps!

Wow, Supa, that looks like a major rework! I look forward to getting in and checking out all the changes.

I told you it'd be interesting to see how players respond to the Clue concept you've come up with.

You may want to see if you can get some non-AE regulars to play thru it as a team to get their take, too, as a lot of MA regulars have certain expectations of an arc going into it.

Plus, you intended the arc for TEAM play, which skews the missions' pace & difficulty when it's reviewed by solo characters. I guess, what I'm saying is, "Don't give up on the concept yet."

Thanx Backfire for the comments. Your input seriously had a lot to do with the changes... and I feel for the better.

Unfortunately, there is contact seperation... and some will find that offsetting... but I will not be changing that. Something happens beyond the scope a level 22-27 Hero's abilities... from an friendly source. Added narrative between transitions I hope helps.

Though this arc is designed for "solo", I am keeping the 2 archetypes of Brute & Dominator in mind as well as teams if they happen.

I've stumbled on "critter balance" and "contact & narrative dialogue" along the way, no doubt. But it's getting closer to being where I want it to be... that's for sure.

Positivity, baby... positivity. And not settling for "this is okay"...

Thread now irrelevent, started up seperate thread for updates and whatnot.

Thread now irrelevent, started up seperate thread for updates and whatnot.