Dr. Graves hurts my brain...

I don't understand the problem with Dr Graves arc. Lets put things in the proper perspective right?

It is the extended tutorial. Youi just got out of the zone, stealing power from Blue Spectrum. You start out as a new young recruit learning the ropes here. So yes, the opportunity to get a powerful patron is a very good one. World Domination will have to wait until you have build up your powerbase. Right now, you have to compete against all the other wannabee's and prove that you are better then them. Dr Graves hates you and wants you humiliated, backed up by the powers that be so you cannot hurt him yet. However you can annoy him until he turns blue by succeeding.

You let Twinshot call you kid when you had chosen Heroside. You listen attentively to Diddo, get annoyed at Flambeaux and are treted like a noob. But of course you ARE supposed to be a noob when you do the tutorial.

This is not the arc for the old grizzled veteran that you really are. So I think it is fine for the target audience.

With one exception. Why blowing up another longbow base! That grows old very very fast when this is your third in as many levels.

Some people just want to see the world burn

Sorry, this will be one of those TL;DR posts.

I'm going to give the developers a break here: I think writing serial content for villainous protagonists is nearly impossible without descending into either camp or blood-drenched grizzle. I can't think of a successful television series consistently written from the viewpoint of a villain that isn't either a comedy or outright horror (featuring nominal protagonists). And even when the villain is the protagonist, most of the time the villain loses or at least does not accomplish all of his or her goals, which would quickly get frustrating if played literally in an MMO.

Just speaking for myself, even for someone with such slapstick characters I am very squeamish about animated violence directed at police officers and random citizens, so if Longbow isn't a perfect analogy for "good" or at least "innocent" so much the better. I would much rather deal with a mustache twirling kind of evil than what might pass for "realistic." The hero side of things works more or less the same way with me. Call it the difference between Modernism and Post-Literacy if you want, but I really don't care which evil character is motivated by what or who because its always going to end in a warehouse full of "bad guys," and if it didn't I'd be disappointed. In order for that to happen, evil (and maybe good too) has to have a certain "heroic fantasy" element added to it: these enemies cannot be reasoned with, they exist only so there can be a cool fight scene, and in stepping up to fight them my morality will not be called into question because there is nothing else "to" them. They must be stopped, and only fireballs and lightning bolts will do it. It's not realistic, it's fantasy.

All of this said, I find the "storyline" element of the game very confusing. For seven years I played a text based MUD which valued role play and continuity very highly. By "continuity" I mean not only within "story arcs" but also within the world; care was taken to ensure there were internally logical explanations for events. City of Heroes has sections of the city being blown up in some story arcs but then you go there (later? before?) and it is just fine; but when Galaxy City was wrecked it became so in all timelines completely. There is also at least one instance I know of where a character dies in a trial, and yet she is still standing around Praetoria like it never happened (happens? will happen? has happened more than once?)

I feel City of Heroes and other MMOs try to shoehorn single player storylines into a multiplayer environment. I gather from reading some player's posts that it makes them feel like they've accomplished something and are making a mark on the game world, but it makes me feel exactly the opposite. For me it underscores that I have absolutely nothing to talk about with other players regarding the world we share because we share space, not a world. I can't say something like "Oh, did you hear so and so died?" like my character very well would say after being told about it, because nobody is "told" about anything.

Basically, this game has little sense of RP continuity. Some people have said they Brainstorm (I think his name is) arc is poor because it tries to explain game mechanics that don't need it, and that's how I feel about "time" being tied to level. I can never talk about Desdemona being "heroic" because she exists in a state of constant flashback. Relating this to the game at large, the game continually makes claims that I am saving the dam, or killing the leader, or witnessing the destruction of a zone, and what have you. I would be more comfortable with it saying I stopped the villain this time, or witnessed a part of the zone's destruction. The incarnate trials are especially egregious offenders in this regard, especially because in order to be an incarnate while playing the trial, you logically must have gotten your power somewhere and it turns out you probably got it from the same event.

Anyway I think writing this kind of stuff is really hard. I don't think we're going to get outstanding villain content, but at the same time I don't care, because I don't read any of it anyway, for the reasons stated above. It never has any bearing on the game world; in fact it has negative bearing on it for me because the world I make up for myself and the people around me is more coherent. Contextually speaking, I have more faith in the short conversation I might have with someone in Atlas Park than what goes on in missions because that, at least, has some sense of having actually happened and multiple witnesses would agree to it.

I just completed the Graves arcs for the first time yesterday, and I personally liked them over all. Some of the twists I expected, and some of them I didn't, so it was a nice mix for me. I liked the characters, especially Zephyr, and kind of hope they show up again later.

I will grant that the coversation parts felt a bit railroady, but I personally think that's a necessary evil in any game that doesn't have a live GM. You could write conversation trees with a hundred unique options at every step, and some characters still wouldn't fit into any of them. So to me I just accept the god mode from the pre-written game and enjoy the story as best I can.

I find the Graves arcs to be entertaining on a "watch the movie" level.

I am sure the writer who wrote them put in a lot of effort: really, it shows in the amount of time put into the NPC personalities and interaction. I appreciate that. I really do. Thank you for these arcs and continue to write. However, there is constructive criticism incoming.

However, they (and to a large extent the corresponding hero arcs) fail on nearly every other level:

- They are designed as an extended tutorial; but they are so easy to skip that noobs will probably end up invited into lowbie underground trials and outlevel them.

While in the underground lowbie trials, these noobs will ask for help at every turn: how do I train? Why is the word 'enhancements' red on my display? Why is the word 'inspirations' red on my display? What power should I choose? What are enhancement slots? This is fine, but the tutorial needs to pull its' own weight by being a viable alternative to this.

If this is intended as an extended tutorial, it should be popped up in your face as the primary option, as in full screen, must click 'no, I don't need more basics' and 'yes I am sure' to dodge it.

- The levels that they teach you things are far too late. A newbie Freem, with their limited ability to communicate and the spam on Help channel (due to the limited ability to communicate) will likely be unable to complete the arc, if as it assumes, they don't know how to train or slot Enhancements.

You should be taught to train before level 3.
You should be taught how to con enemies before being sent out of the zone.
You should probably be taught how to bring up your map display if you have accidentally disabled it before being required to use it.
You should be taught how to slot/use enhancements/inspirations before your 5th or so mission (by which time your enhancements/inspirations should be full).

Since the first thing they do in the Graves arc is send you to a warehouse to talk with a bunch of NPCs, this would be a great time to have those NPCs teach you these things (Twinshot could do similar in her base). Put a trainer and vendor in the instance, along with training dummies.

Heck, on the Graves side, instead of a warehouse let us invade a Longbow base, defeat everyone, and then use their trainer hologram, vending machine, and training dummies, then show what the redside versions look like.

- The 'character voice' for the Twinshot arcs is reasonably generic, but the one for the Graves arc (particularly the section where you play stupid and are called stupid and smile and like it) in order to learn how to train at trainers is really bad. I roleplay tabletop, and many of my friends who are quite capable of playing and enjoying a villainous character already hate the 'lackeyness' of red side. This section would put them in 'throw the keyboard across the room' mode.

Just add optional dialogue along the lines of "Graves thinks we are both idiots, so he sent me here to trick you into teaching me how to get trained. But you already have orders to train me. Please explain the process and I won't waste any more of our time."

Once the AE filter is fixed, I will not only write a better arc, I will write a better Doctor Graves/Twinshot arc.

And I am sure that you, whoever is reading this, can do the same.

I just completed the arc last night and I had a lot of fun. Far superior to most arcs redside, and nothing I've ever played in AE (and I've played some of the best AE arcs) could ever compare (in part due to the primitive tools the AE gives you; they can do much more interesting things in official content these days).

WARNING: I bold names.

Okay, I felt I should actually finish the arc before I make criticisms, as previously I did the 5-10 arc and that put me off it so badly I never bothered to finish it.

I'll start with the good:

The twist at the end was pretty interesting. The map was creepy, and I did get the classic evil smirk when I revisited the NPC involved and found the new text given. It did seem to come out of the left field a little, but the explanation does explain some of a character's more... irritating abilities, although it felt more like the twist tried to justify the evidence than the other way around. A few more hints could help there, so long as it doesn't descend into mind-bendingly obvious levels of stupid. The explanation of how the Fateweavers work is also interesting stuff.

Now... Criticisms.

The arc feels incredibly railroady, and this isn't in spite of, but because of the fact dialogue trees are used. As someone on the channel I use put it: "You have the option of being a jerk or a dick". Where is the cold, unfeeling killer's lines? Where is the friendly, jovial psychopath? Where is the knight templar who has fallen as far as the villains he condemns or the noble demon who has principles in spite of his villainy? A brilliant example of this is the set of choices on the first computer. As I believe someone already said, it explodes anyway immediately after, why can't I just smash it? The fact I get choices here is also really annoying when I subsequently don't get to choose to not mock Zephyr, or to not rise to Omnicore's 12-year-old-sibling level trolling.

Why is it necessary for the arc to be about kowtowing to not one, but two grandiose overlords? Heroside doesn't have this problem, not in the same way, and even then it'd be more excuseable because heroes have a history of deferring to judiciary or civil bodies. I want to be a villain so I can play by my own rules. Sandy's help there is a minor comfort when you just realise you've swapped Grave's game for his.

Why is the arc written entirely for normal, run-of-the-mill humans? I'm serious. In spite of all your lauded powers, numerous parts of the mission assume you're normal. I remember a long, long time ago, running my first paper mission and getting the "You slick back your hair and crack your knuckles. Time to be the bad guy." on my first alt, a robot. I laughed a little back then, but at least my robot's non-existant hair was never used as a plot point when other people in the mission were specifically barred for their baldness. Seriously. Check the computers in the mansion and see what they say about Omnicore and Zephyr. It specifically notes they're unsuitable due to being cyborgs and magic, respectively. Where does that leave any magic or cyborg characters you've made, let alone full robots? Why, also, do you have no psi resistance? What if you chose Willpower, or, hell, you just made a robot?

Why does the arc assume you're an absolute friggin' idiot? Is it necessary for my character to bellow "Is that good or bad?!" like a lost kid after reading his details? Do we really need the, frankly painful, sequence where Dollface not only convinces you you have a mental time bomb in your head, but subsequently Dean John Yu mocks you to your face for falling to it, on the basis your character doesn't know some simple latin? Oh, and did we have to retcon that anyone who's ever bought from the Tech Quartermaster has been bugged the entire time?

As has also been adressed, you don't learn enough quickly enough, either. The arc is very easy to overlook and teaches you how to level at level 5, at best. This is far, far too late. The advice also needs to be a little more obvious. Some players won't realise where to look for clues unless it's spelled out. These are, admittedly, also problems with the hero version. (I also got a little laugh out of the "Maybe you've been mindwiped too?" line, so credit there.)

The final indignity of this story arc is the fact it desperately needs a proofread. Even if I was okay with the poor plot and mission structure, and the lessons that come far too late, I come to things like Graves telling me to go and fight Overdrive. Who won't be appearing for quite a few levels yet. There are also a lot of typos and painful grammar. I can't remember the exact line, but there was a section of the "Mental timebomb" bit that I had to read a few times to get my head around what had just been said.

Oh, and the fact Zephyr can use Ascension pieces at level 1 and we can't is an ouuuuuutraaaage.

So, to conclude, the principle of these arcs is good; villains need some form of tutorial as much as heroes, and the twist at the end is also interesting and very cinematic. Getting there, however, is a painful slog with only occasional bright bits to relieve you from having to listen to yourself embarass yourself again and again. Really, this is the main problem with the arc; the finale could probably redeem all the other bits if your character wasn't so bad. It's an arc I think I'll be avoiding unless I need the badges on most of my characters, however.

And before I go: Whoever wrote this, I totally sympathise. Writing arcs for villains is hard, much more so than for heroes. At the end of the day, all heroes are heroes, whereas villainy encompasses a very broad territory. I think the comment about "where are my knight templars or noble demons" covers that pretty well, including those as options would be incredibly difficult without derailing the arc or introducing plot holes. But I'd ideally like an arc where it feels like some other options are there: As it is it seems we get functionally identical choices, when we get them, and when we don't we're petty, competitive, arrogant jerks. I'd like villains with a bit more class than that, please.

Just finished the first two arcs for Dr. Graves and...

Good gravy my villain is an idiot. A stupefying, mouth-breathing idiot. Never mind the whole little fish in a big pond bit, it's unbelievable that he'll ever be a scheming mastermind on the same level as Doctor Doom when he's dumber than a bag of hammers. Hurr durr, Dean Yu isn't jerking me around at all, I'll go shoot the Luddites and the obviously fake mind bomb will be disarmed!

And what's with this "cooperate under pain of death" crap from Scirocco? Where's the option to betray this clown at the first possible opportunity? Oh right, thirty levels away, woo. He could have struck a deal, help cheat my way to victory in exchange for my spying services. That's some classic villainy. But that would put too much agency in my villain's hands, I guess. I'm not seeing much to convince John Q. Newbie that being evil is going to be very fun.

Also, after clearing Omnicore's death trap, what does Scirocco mean by her using "forbidden tech"? Exactly what tech is forbidden? The whole reason Crey has so many offices in the Rogue Isles is the lack of oversight. And even if the tech is forbidden, villain. Breaking the law is what villains DO.

All this makes me wonder why my villain is in the Rogue Isles in the first place. If I constantly have The Man breathing down my neck, drafting me into government work and making sure I obey the law, I'm not really a villain any more, am I? Might as well go back to Paragon City, where I'll only have Longbow gunning for me, and the super dudes just throw you in jail instead of carrying out on-the-spot executions.

What redside really needs is a series of Paths a la Praetoria, that allow you to head to 50 in various ways, each with it's own feel, Contacts, and intersections where you can jump onto another path for a while.

- A Doctor Doom path ("Megalomania"): I am a vain genius and only I can rule the world properly.

- A Lex Luthor path ("Hedonism"): I'll take that money, thank you. Oh, and could you put some more of that power on my plate? Just pile it on, and I'll be over in the corner with the babes and the loud music.

- Cthulhu path ("Nihilism"): Levelled cities. Ruined wastelands that will never support life again. Souls wailing in torment. Beautiful.

...at the very least.

This is in addition to the current path ("Personal Power?"), which basically seems to top out at earning a respectful independence from Lord Recluse, at which point you presumably move on to becoming an Incarnate.

Time and tech supporting, it would be good to have paths based on each of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Um... English is not my first aw screw it. That hasn't worked for me for years. Sorry, I make that mistake occasionally. I'll be more careful in the future

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.