Kitsune9tails

If I was convinced that the Devs are satisfied with the current level of balance, I would agree. But the latest patch on Test indicates that the Devs are still working on getting the right balance.

I'm sure they know they can't please everyone. I am also sure that they aren't going to look at situations like with the example player and just shrug.

You can't change people necessarily, but you can hopefully get your entire game paced correctly so that it's not a 'bait and switch' where you attract people you can't retain.

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Whereas the "hanging-out" is one of the main draws for me and "my kind". The social aspect, as it were. But, addition accepted.

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"What do you mean, 'you people'?"

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When I logged out his SoA was lvl 7, when I got back in 3 or so hours later he was mid 30's. When I asked him exactly how much enjoyment he was getting from watching the xp bar blur past, he was 'well it passes the time but its a bit boring'.
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We ran some normal MA mishes with some SG toons, including a low level toon from the lad in question, xp was good, we had a good fight, close at times, all had to work together to win but win we did and we felt good for it. That's what I love about CoH/V.
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All he said was 'well the xp is very slow, gonna take forever to level at this pace' and then he left to go join a farm.


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This is the fear I have about this situation.

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What fear? That you will have fewer people to group with if people who like faster rewards are not forbidden from seeking them?

ALL mmos are pretty mush the same - they are ultimately all about levelling. The only way to fix this is to make the world dynamic, to make the results of players' actions in the world persistent. But that has nothing to do with the current topic.

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Yes, that's my fear.

Actually, I solo a lot, but what I fear is that the example player might have enjoyed the game more, gotten emotionally invested in his character, and ultimately played longer if his first impression of the game was that it was 'well-paced and exciting' rather than alternately 'boring' or 'slow'.

If his experience becomes the prevalent feeling, it will be hard for devs to fix and could definitely impact the gameplay experience of everyone else. If the game sees a huge spike in players followed by a mass exodus, they may try all kinds of ill advised stuff to retain players who can't be satisfied because they have been taught not to want a challenge, yet are bored by the lack of challenge.

In fact, the Devs have already been accused of this.

Hrm. That post doesn't fit in my sig.

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When I logged out his SoA was lvl 7, when I got back in 3 or so hours later he was mid 30's. When I asked him exactly how much enjoyment he was getting from watching the xp bar blur past, he was 'well it passes the time but its a bit boring'.
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We ran some normal MA mishes with some SG toons, including a low level toon from the lad in question, xp was good, we had a good fight, close at times, all had to work together to win but win we did and we felt good for it. That's what I love about CoH/V.
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All he said was 'well the xp is very slow, gonna take forever to level at this pace' and then he left to go join a farm.


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This is the fear I have about this situation.

Well, you know...

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Instead they allow the user to turn off "their" xp gains if they feel they are leveling too fast. The devs don't make any provisions for those players that want to control "others" xp gains, since the devs themselves have that covered just fine.


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If there is no policy to remove farms based on rate of xp gain, then you are correct.

If the Devs already have and are enforcing such a policy, then I see no harm in publicizing, or even enforcing, that number.

This is an interesting subject, Arcanaville:

One might think that some time prior to this game becoming 5 years old, the Devs might have developed some maximum number of, say, xp/hour that they are willing to allow. Maybe they had some number in mind during the design phase.

I think they have some idea of how many gameplay hours it should take a player to level to 50: 50 hours is probably too fast. There is also some similar number for how long it should take a player to 'purple out', etc. There is certainly some number above which they will take action.

I don't see any harm with them saying, "50 hours (whatever that xp/hour works out to, it would probably scale based on level) is too fast. If your mission is generating these numbers, watch out; we will probably take action. There are other criteria, but there is your speed number."

For that matter, they could probably monitor each and every pleyer's rewards per hour (Herostats can), and pop up a message: "Slow down!" if they wanted to.

Thanks for your review! I keep finding holes in my CoX lore; this is a great way to find these things out, as it turns out.

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Upon entering the first mission as my level 50 running on challenge 4, I'm greeted by a map completely filled with level 51-52 custom bosses from a group called CopShop, who were Assault Rifle/Willpower, both set to standard.

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I put those guys in there as part of an attempt to make the whole mission levels 1-54. It's not working for some reason.

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These Crey Security Guards, as it turns out, are in the regular security guard group. They have a little over 1/3 the HP of a normal minion, but have the furthest perception radius I have ever seen on any enemy.

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Yes, I didn't realize these guys were such a problem. I tested the mission with Kitsune9tails, who is a Tanker with Super Speed and Stealth (to represent shapeshifting) and I thought they were just weaker guys with a slightly improved aggro radius. Must remember to test even previously tested missions with a wider range of characters...

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The crate drops two near identical clues in your clue tab, I'm assuming one from the crate and one from mission complete, one should be edited out.

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I keep fixing this, and it keeps coming back.

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However, again all of the CoT patrols spout the same dialogue.

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There are 2 diiferent sets of 3 patrols with different dialogue. I guess you just kept running into the same guys. I gave them all some dialogue to make sure some of it got seen, but I can take some out.

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Instead of having her ask what kind of spell the player wants, getting no answer, and saying "Oh yeah we can totally do that" (I mean, what if the spell was a spell that exploded Statesman's head or something?

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This was an attempt to give the player an RP moment they can put into their bio and a feeling of control. Statesman's head is theoretically going to explode, only very very slowly. I guess it didn't have the desired effect in your case.

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Security guards and police are all fine, those are vanilla enough to go with any story, but cyborg zombies jolted me right out of the magic theme.

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Good point. But I didn't feel that the Chain felt right on this huge map. YMMV, in this case, I guess. Also, the reason I didn't beef this mission up more is because I want it to have minimal requirements. I don't want low level villains to feel they have to clear that map of Vahz. Of course, they can if they want.

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In mission 4, when I was reading Zhang Qi's (one of the hostages) bio, her bio said that she had no idea that her soul would be replaced by that of an ancient wizard.

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Yes, I will fix this.

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I also am having a hard time wrapping my head around why the RIP and the Legacy Chain are fighting each other, unless... the RIP are there to arrest my kidnapping targets?



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Since the RIP are up to no good, and are cops, I made the assumption that they would oppose the Legacy Chain, who are good guys who wear armor and carry weapons. I have run afould oif cops a few times in RL while wearing armor and carrying weaons...but that's a story for another time. Besides, as stereotypical brutal cops, they need no excuse to bust a few heads.

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Finally, a couple things about CoT lore. Oranbega is only in Paragon City, the underground cities you go to in the Rogue Isles, I believe, are the ruins of the Mu civilization. At least I'm fairly certain, I'm a bit rusty on my CoV lore. In any case, it's not Oranbega. Also, it doesn't say anywhere that someone has to be of Oranbegan descent in order to become a CoT mage. In fact, there are no people of Oranbegan descent, as because of the pact they made with Ermeeth to destroy the Mu continent, they all became ghosts, so Polyantha saying that you can't become a true member because you don't share their bloodline doesn't make any sense. As far as I know, anyone and their mother can become a CoT mage if a spirit thorn gets stabbed into their chest.


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The implication is supposed to be that you travel to PC to enter Oranbega. But I was sure you had to have the Mu Bloodline to become a Circle mage. I could be wrong, though.

Thanks again for the review! I tried some experimental things with the player's 'voice' and I'm sorry it didn't work for you, but I'm glad you liked it overall. I'll continue to tweak.

Good job, and see you later!

Thanks a lot for the review! Glad you had fun. Going to address a few of your points here: I have ben experimenting with a few tricks that have gotten comment in these missions.

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The only deviation I could see were in a few of the ambushes in the later missions, particularly the one or ones associated with the kidnappings in the fourth mission: they appeared to be set to medium or hard with a front spawn in.

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I'll double check, but if I remember correctly, they are all set to Easy. They are indeed set to spawn in Front.

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For both missions one and two, it did strike me as odd that the “decoys” were all destructible, while the real goal was clickable. It seemed like they should all be one or the other.

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This was done deliberately, to make the true goal easier to find.

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The reference to “walking cardboard boxes” totally threw me.

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hee hee, A little lame attempt at humor. It's a reference to a recurring bug in CoX where some 'inanimate' objects sometimes become unrooted, at least enough to 'look' at you when you enter aggro range. Lately, Rikti Bombs have been fleeing combat on occaision! It's also a reference to the Metal Gear Solid series of games, where the hero often stealths around wearing a cardboard box as a disguise.

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It’s not that Vahzilok don’t fit in a graveyard, but I think it needed to be clearer to the player what exactly they were doing there (I imagine it was to dig up corpses for body parts – maybe a few “boss” spawns with them set to the digging emote? You wouldn’t want to overdo it, but it could fit them into the situation a little better).


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Not a bad idea.

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IMO, mentioning that “you have, no doubt, a terrible fate awaiting you” for the kidnap victims without actually mentioning the true nature of the Circle would make this work a lot better as an intro arc. [ QUOTE ]


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Good catch.

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It’s really a tiny nitpick, but there are places where you’ve got a period, that it would just look better in the nav window if you’d omit the period.

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Also a good catch.

Good luck with your character, and I think your concept is an awesome idea! Be careful on the way to those trainers and in those Safeguards.

In general, I agree with your post, but it can be difficult to do as you suggest without making the player feel that they are unconnected to the events of the plot.

Hopefully, you can get the player to care about the people that are about to be betrayed or whatever before the twist happens.

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You know who else is fond of steam power?

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Peter Gabriel?

Arc #17702, "Every Rose..."
It's designed and intended as a lowbie (levels 1-10) villain arc, so Pro Payne will get a chance to tale a little walk on the wild side.
It is written as a chance for a new villain to join the Circle of Thorns, rather than Arachnos.

Hope you have fun! I'm looking forward to any feedback you have. It's always fascinating seeing how various people react differently to the same content!

Respectfully Submitted:

"Every Rose..."
#17702

Intended for lowbie villains (levels 1-10)
5 missions
Intended as a tutorial/introduction, it is an alternative for new players who want to join the Circle of Thorns, rather than Arachnos. Not a deep, intense story by design, intended to work for either stealthers or smashers, solo or for teams
No Elites

It has been reviewed before, but I'd like your opinion as well. This version has been modfied from previously reviewed versions due to feedback.

I hope you have fun!

I have made some adjustments to my lowbie villain arc that you reviewed earlier, #17702, "Every Rose..."

I knit the story together a little more, eliminated a few bugs, and fixed my canon mistakes. Hopefully, I also retained the earlier tutorial flavor of the arc and made it a bit more fun to play.

One of the maps is indeed huge, but that is intentional; the target should be relatively easy to find if you just want to free them, and it should give you plenty of tough enemies to fight if that's your thing as well.

I am concerned about losing the Carnie tent map; I think it may be needed as a bit of decoration to get the family reunion to feel like one, but you tell me. I thought about setting the reunion in the Rave map, but it was too small.

When you have time.

Looking forward to the new review!

If a sentient shark chooses to eat a seal, then it is to blame, by definition. The seal and the ocean might also share some of that blame.

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Please keep in mind that any Architect mission that is advertised as a farm mission will be removed. This is also the case if any of the dialog inside the mission indicates that it is intended to be a farm mission.


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This might be a fairly ironclad policy being enforced by a bot of some kind.

I think the important thing is to warn the player in the mission description and Contact text to the best extent that won't spoil the story as to the calibre of opposition they will have.

If the mission description says, "EB at end is tough for my Level 50 Invuln/Str with purple IOs", that info will attract some people who are after that sort of challenge, while warning away others that want to avoid that sort of thing.

Since some people probably skip or ignore mission descriptions, you also want the Contact to say at some point prior to the EB showing up, "This guy is tough! You might want to bring some friends, unless you're even tougher than I heard." or even "Only <author insert> has been able to battle this guy toe to toe, but he's super strong and can't be hurt" (that second example is annoying, but informative).

Everyone wins, because the arc doesn't get one-starred by people encountering content they don't like.

The reason people care if others farm is because:

- They fear it will bring nerfs to the rest of the game. Farming of missions has caused those missions to gain timers or lose rewards in the past. Farming of certain critters has caused those critters to lose rewards or have their AI changed. Nerfs like these affect the nonfarmers to a degree equal to or greater than the degree the affect farmers.

- They fear that it will doom the game via jealousy-induced ragequit. Some people can't stand farming, just physically can't stand it. But they don't want to take 3 months getting to 50 when their farmer buddies get there in 1 week. If enough people like this move on to another game where they feel they can 'compete', we all suffer.

- They fear that the Devs will design content around the farmers. Farming often involves powerful powerset combinations, like stacked debuffs. Even if these combinations don't end up getting nerfed, the Devs may come to beleive that they are the norm, and design foes that can basically ignore the casual gamer. Some beleive this is already happening with the creation of foes like Sappers or Vanguard Magi.

- They fear burnout. A few people may actively enjoy farming, but the people that actually hate it but are willing to do it to get the shinies may outnumber them. These people are logged into some other game and actually playing THAT game while their characters sit at the door to a farm. They get no investment in CoX, and just leave when they finally hit 50 and find out that there is no endgame, and they have missed the journey. Or even worse, they just end up repeating the same content over and over until they just burn out and leave the game having seen no other content but the ITF or Eden or Katie Hannon the whole time.

There are a lot of reasons to fear farming, and there are a lot of ways it could affect people other than hardcore farmers.

That said, the only real ways to stop farming without affecting non-farmers that I've ever thought of would probably be some kind of hard cap on earnings per hour, and even then, farmers would consistently hit the cap while casuals would be below it.

The only questions are:

- Would such a solution would be worth angering the people it would anger?

- Do we have a choice; is the harm done by farming worse than the harm to be done by any solution?

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Happened to me too--I modified the description to make it clear it wasn't a farming mission. And while I have a local copy, it's not completely up to date.

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How does this happen? Doesn't the system update your local copy every time you make changes and hit 'Republish'? Where are the changes coming from to go to the server? Are they only stored in RAM?

This is a triumph. I'm making a note here; huge success. It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.

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Arc 17702
Every Rose...

Length: 5 missions
Foes: Vahzilok, Legacy Chain, Security Guards, RIP, Tuatha de Damnon, Coralax
Level Range: (New way to list level range) 1-40, 1-15, 5-10, 5-30, 5-9
Contact: Polyana Hawthorne (custom)
Rating: 3 stars


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Thanks for the review! I also recently got relocated at work, oddly enough. In any case, I will be making a few adjustments, and I will let you know when it is done. See you soon!

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Name: "Every Rose..."
Arc ID #: 17702
Forum Handle: Kitsune9tails
Level Range: 1-10 (Villainous)


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Hey, that's me!

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Ok, I am already partial to this arc having done nothing else because of what it purports to be. You see, I can't stand Arachnos and the shoehorning of villains into working for Arachnos that the CoV plot is.

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I totally agree, and your missions are on my list of missions to do for that very reason.

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However, the arc starts off with some problems. First of all, your contact says she doesn't sense your powers coming from the Blood of Atlantis. Firstly, I think she's referring to the Blood of Mu, in which case, it'd be better if she just used that. Second, I'm pretty sure CoX lore has pretty much most magic users descended from Mu or actually a CoT-inhabited body. And, of course, many RPers (supposedly the people who would be interested in this type of mission) may say they're from the Blood of Mu, so this could be a little weird.


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Admitted. I should just use Mu and Oranbega, although I thought they were both associated with Atlantis. I figured that the Circle would be using the 'standard method' to recruit the player if they could sense that their magical blood was of the proper type, so the assumption is that whether or not you qualify, the Contact can't sense that for some reason. Since you never know if a player has that in their backstory or not, you kind of have to assume it.

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You are mainly presented with crates that are destroyable objects, none of which contain the tome. But the actual crate is actually a collect object, which is a little bit... off, I think. It's a little odd having them be different.


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This is something I thought I'd try to help the player. Only one crate makes the 'glowy hum' and can't be targeted, making it a little easier to find among other crates.

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This mission also features the "fake objectives destroyable, real one collection" thing as the first mission, so I just skipped the destroyables and went right to the collect.

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See?

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For the next mission, you need to go get the spell cast on you. The objectives of the mission are quite vague in the debriefing, so I have no idea what to expect going in. The contact warns that you might not immediately feel the effects of the spell (since you won't, actually, notice anything). You go into the mission and it appears to autocomplete, telling you the spell has been cast.


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That's a bug. I have since altered the mission to work around that.

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It would have been nice if this was a smaller map and used a CoV one, as it stands it's one of the more annoying outdoor CoH maps.


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Noted and will be changed It was chosen for the carnie tents, but someone suggested setting it in an apartment building and I'll try to find a map that fits that.

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Anyway, that mission is a bit of a jumble. It's on an annoying map with an annoying mission type (the escort) and has 3 different enemy types that are a little random in their selection.


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Not random; the Chain are there to protect the hostages, the RIP are ther because they are the local police, and the Family is all over the isles ...and is there for the pun.

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The contact goes a little... out of character (not breaking the 4th wall, just acting not like a Circle member) by mentioning big screens and DVDs. But whatever, odd little aside.



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Well, they have to do something for fun when they aren't out stabbing people with thorns. Seriously, though... I like the idea that many of these villains have relatively normal lives when they aren't out actively villaining. Villains are people too! Except when they aren't of course...

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When you meet with your contact, her speech is cut off midway through.

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I'll double check that.

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While, yes, you do have to prove yourself to the Thorns, I'd have liked a coherent story arc better than just doing a few tasks and them going "Welcome aboard!"


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Fair enough. I think I'll just gently disagree on this point, though. If joining the Circle required some big specific plot, they wouldn't have level 1 members! But I will consider it.

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Plus, the misrepresentation of CoX Lore is big a failing. It also doesn't quite make sense to me that the Circle would be sharing its secrets so openly to someone who has yet to prove themselves.

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I will reread my lore and try to tighten that up. And I figured that the CoT had to be a little forthcoming, or the PC would not realistically join them. But it's a very interesting and discussable point.

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I hope the author goes back and reworks the story into something that's more of a story, as I'd definitely rate it higher if it were better.

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I was specifically aping the style of early CoH arcs, where you are working for ELITE or whoever and it isn't a cohesive story but more of a tutorial. I have a new arc coming up that should be more of a cohesive story.

Hopefully, with fewer typos.

Thanks a lot for the review and the rating. I will definitely rework the arc a bit and I hope you like it more later!

As was once so eloquently put...