LunarKnight

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Specific Review:

This is one of those arcs that make ALOT of assumptions on the character. It assumes you are a world dominating obsessed villian with a draconian management style. It assumes you have a rival and assumes you have henchmen.
To this I say....So what.
The arc felt very much like James Bond meets Venture Brothers from a villians point of view. It may not fit your character, in fact it probably won't. But its fun as hell. Forget your characters goals and motives and just sit back for the show on this one. The use of a henchman as a contact is excellent in that it makes you feel as tho you are the one plotting not being given jobs to do. truth be told I had been looking for a way to do this with my villian arc and am now stealing this idea, or rather a variation of it. The only thing I might suggest is instead of a numbered henchman maybe make him just a henchman. That way you can go Darth Vader on him and have the player kill them for giving bad news only to have a new henchman the next time. You can have them introduce themselves each mission....just a thought.


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Deal. I'll trade you the henchmen for the killing them bit. I like that a lot.

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Mission 1: The henchmen foes look great, simple faceless masses with a info text to explain why you see them again and again. Well done. The map was a good smallish size for a kill all and enabled the pacing flow.
The only thing in this mission that bothered me was the use of /devices on everything. Although for some reason the foes did spam nades less and attack more than I noticed in previous missions it still bothered me. Did not mark you down for it tho. This is why there is a contradiction in my TL-Dr. The foe is annoying yet not as much as I thought it would be. Perhaps they are fixing it?


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I think its mainly because they're AR. They seem to get stuck in rifle mode and don't go back to the Nade. Ideally I'd give them no secondary at all, because I wanted to make sure they were relatively harmless, but that's not an option. Devices seems to be the next best option in that regard. Any suggestion on how to handle this without making them stronger would be greatly appreciated. Making them ridiculously easy to kill was sort of crucial to the design. Note that even the "boss" objectives are still Lts.

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Mission 3:
Doctor Reverb himself proved to be a challenge my first go and a chump my second go. I could not figure out what had caused this. Regardless, keeping your bosses moderatly weak might be a good idea as the story will flow faster if they are. And speed in a comedy arc is good...keeps the jokes flying.


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I'm thinking the Elites need to be toned down. They make life difficult for Mez types and I've noticed a few times they stack up and become much harder than I intended. I'm not totally certain but that could have been part of the problem. Reverb should probably be toned down as well, but it's hard to do so. Part of the problem might be Liquefy, which I can't take away without also taking the Bubble (which I like on him, but need to take from the Elites). I think I'll start by toning down the elites and see from there.

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Mission 4: For some reason the humor slowed at this point. I suspect that the arc is not fully completed. Some suggestiong would be to include humerous text to your rescues and collections. Make use of your 'clues' to add more jokes without it being thrust down a players throat. If they want to read more they will if not they won't. It can't really hurt you.
If I may be so bold, one of your rescues says that the player has your family and when you rescue him he says don't hurt Emily. I got the feeling of inside joke here. Instead maybe something like 'he has my goldfish' and 'don't hurt Wanda'. This way you have a joke that everyone is included on. The family thing was too serious for the arc IMO.


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Mission 4 was the last designed and apparently it shows. Originally I had mission 2 end with the minions prepping the final launch which was ready by the time you took care of Reverb. Too much happened without the players involvement, so I added this mission later. You make a lot of good points though, I definitely need to rewrite some of the more sinister lines. I think I was worried people would be upset if it made their villain seem less evil, but by mission 4 you've either accepted the satire or not, so its probably not an issue.

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Mission 5:The death chamber idea was great and done well but with no clue attached it was anticlimatic. Same with the rocket launching. Again, use clues to give more to your players who are enjoying your arc.
Also the goodbye text was more or less a throwaway. Give us the big picture...tell us exactly what your evil plan was. I don't care if its silly ...thats the point of this arc...have some fun.


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Wow, mission 5 totally failed from a storytelling perspective. Originally I had designed the thing to be a sort of "if you fall into the old cliches you fail, but you can take over the world if you ignore them". Monologuing to Fantastic (optional) would cause him to escape and if you couldn't kill him, he could get away with the info that stops your plan. Unfortunately, this led to a required objective based on an optional one and just didn't work. What actually happens now is if you monologue he escapes the deathtrap (you totally missed that, which is nobody's fault but mine) and you can kill him directly. That just... failed, miserably.

I think I'm just going to have to let go of my last intentions of keeping the situation generic and dive right in. You noticed the other aspects of that (the "project" is never defined, etc), but it seems clear its already a penny for a pound kind of situation anyway. My original player driven narrative falls flat compared to my more heavily scripted missions that proceed it.

I think I'll just take the concept all the way. Force the player to monologue and let Captain F escape and potentially thwart the whole thing. It raises the stakes in the final mission considerably and gives me more characters to flesh things out. I can also tie in the characters of mission 4 a little to anchor that firmly into the rest of the story.

Much appreciate the feedback. It's been really helpful. I'll send you a PM once the arc is fixed up. Glad you liked it.

Both of the arcs in my sig could use a good flogging, particularly the villainous one. I'd love to get them close to as perfect as possible.

Both of the arcs in my sig could use a good flogging, particularly the villainous one. I'd love to get them close to as perfect as possible.

I'm not completely sure how Death Ray would work out animation wise. I don't think it could keep a constant beam on the enemy from your gun. I'd kinda like to see something like that in the game, but its sort of difficult with the game's animation system.

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..... all this effort to make some really intricate and gorgeous magic costumes, and no sign of a simple Wizard Robe variation of the Trenchcoat? Comeon devs, people have been asking for a basic Wiz's Robe for ages!

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SexyJ has said that with the current engine, player robes are an impossibility, IIRC. Seems he's tried it several times, but could never get the to work.

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Yeah, it basically comes down to the fact that there are certain powersets (coughmartialartscough) that make true "wizard robes" impossible to animate. Jay explained this as much in the Q&A at HeroCon.

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Hopefully someday BAB's dream of costume options limited by powersets will become a reality then.

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When a Kheldian above level 30 is playing, mob groups will contain level 30 Warrior Quantum Gunners, regardless of the group's level or composition.

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I'm pretty certain this is fixed. I ran 2 full arcs today with my PB and didn't see a single Quantum or Void at all.

Arc Name: Ex Machina
Arc ID: 9461
Faction: Custom Tech Faction
Creator Global/Forum Name: LunarKnight (Lunar Seraph4 on test)
Difficulty Level: Moderate to Hard. 1 AV to fight and an EB as well. The custom group has taken me down a few times.
Synopsis: A new Crey superweapon has gone berserk. Get to the lab and shut it down!
Estimated Time to Play: About an hour. 4 missions, but each is relatively short.
Link to More Details or Feedback: Feedback Thread

Let me know what you think. Any feedback is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Known Issues:
<ul type="square">[*] Custom Enemy heights are often set to minimum. They're intended to be a lot taller, but until that bug is fixed I'm done fighting with it.[*] Custom Bosses display the wrong faction. There's a bug causing my custom bosses to display their base group rather than the custom group they belong to.[/list]

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There's a small chance that a Red name will contradict me, but I'm pretty sure that they will retain all rights, just as they do to the characters you create in COX.

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/this

If you have personal attachments to your arcs, or think they might make a great story or novel or webcomic sometime, then use loosely shifted variations in the MA. I'm creating all new characters and organizations, just against the possibility that the personal material I'm otherwise referencing (some of which I've published) might be useful to me elsewhere down the line.

Besides, it's fun to come up with new things.

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I'm a big fan of the idea of "Paragoning" anything I put in the game. If I've got a militant extremist themed character, I'll write her with ties to the Council; if an evil secret cult wants to unleash darkness on the world, I'll change it to the Thorns. CoH's best storywriting feature is the multitude of concept neutral organizations to play off of. While I've got unique groups in mind as well, its really easy to rework a character into Paragon exclusive variation and still keep my own stories... my own stories.

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For me personally, I would rather they DO count towards defeat badges, would make life so much easier if I could say stick BP Masks and Ghosts in a mish Kill 2 "birds" with one stone. I do hope they rethink this part and make the baddies count toward defeat badges.

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Which is exactly why they don't count in the first place....

See: All Trophy missions in LBP.

I suspect the Hall of Fame setting will be set unreachably high (I actually expected it to be turned off) for the first couple months while the devs data mine to determine what they REALLY want. I suppose they want it on so that people will at least try, but I'm sure they'd rather nothing gets in than have their permanent pool flooded with subpar entries.

That doesn't mean it might not be a bad idea to title all of your missions "Naruto vs Master Chief" though.

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What happens to arcs if the player who created them goes inactive?

Can trial accounts use the MA? ( Better not... )

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Probably the same thing that happens to the rest of their stuff.... nothing.

Better not...

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Another question: can we have "Enemy teleport on defeat," similar to Professor Echo's escapes?

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I hope so, I see when can make bosses try to flee, but IDK about the teleport out trigger.

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They can get even more detailed and create full enemy groups, giving each enemy unique costumes and powers.

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This brings up a question I've had for a while now, and I really hope to get a "Yes" on this:

Certan enemies perform a trick or power when defeated. Carnies have a PBAoE End Drain power they use. Some Council and Nemesis robots explode. Some Clockwork summon Gears when defeated. And some Council change into (summon) Warwolves when defeated.

Will we be able to add these abilities to an enemy group we make?

Example: Take a fairly large sized map. Put in a few spawns of a custom group which we'll call "Zombies". Nothing complex there. Now, fill the map with a second custom group, which we'll call "Civilians". Civilians are non-hostile, much like the ones in Mayhem/Safeguard missions, and can not be attacked by the player (Invalid Target). But Zombies attack Civilians and can kill them.

Can I give the Civilians group the "On Death" ability to change into (summon) a member of the Zombie group, so that it appears that the Zombies are infecting the Civilians?

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While I'm really hopeful we can use "turn into Warwolf" and "Drain Soul" style abilities on our custom mobs, I'd be pretty certain this scenario isn't going to happen. That'd be making a custom power itself, which I'm going to go out on a limb and say no, that's impossible.

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Are the tickets that you get from playing an arc the same as the tickets that the creator gets from other people playing and ranking their arc?

If they are the same, that means that someone with a popular arc can make thousands of tickets without ever playing the game -- tickets that are valid to exchange for valuable items.

If they are different systems, that means we have yet *another* form of "currency" in the game: inf, prestige, vanguard merits, reward merits, player tickets, architect tickets.

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On the other hand, they get absolutely no rewards for the hours spent playing the game designing the mission in the first place so... *shrugs*

My guess is though that the Ticket rewards won't be as good as the Merit ones or at least won't be as efficiently priced.

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When I read the article at lunch this after noon, I called my wife and told her "I think my head just exploded!"

The MA is an exciting addition to CoH.

However, one line in the description cut into my enthusiasm greatly, unless I'm misinterpreting:

"At the high level we allow you to create your own stories and share them with others in the game."

What does "At the high level" mean? I've been in CoH for 30 months, but I have severe altitis. My highest level character is 32. Is the MA level-gated? If I can't get in and start creating content at release, it will be a *major* disappointment. This is the update I've been looking forward to the most.

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He means "from a birds eye view" or "there's lots of stuff this lets you do, but it basically does this". It has nothing to do with "levels" in terms of RPG character progression.

EG: At a high level, a car moves you quickly.

Any chance for the 72 month Vet Reward we can get a pattern that says:

"I played this game for six years and all I got was this lousy shirt"?

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Really...much ado about nothing? The more I think about it, the more I realize that only my teleporters will see a benefit. Any of us that know the joy of Combat Jumping/Hurdle are not giving that up. I have Hasten on exactly one character and she isn't giving that up. (I hit it after Dull Pain) Hover isn't going away on my fliers.

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I've got a ton of Flyers who can't efficiently use Air Superiority, nor have any real use for Hover. They'll enjoy this.

I've also got a lot of characters with tight builds that got stuck with SS/SJ because they need Hasten/Combat Jumping. That's a great change too.

I'm mainly seeing myself use Fly and TP more on characters that didn't before.

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How many old timers are there still around to be able to get the 60 months Vet Reward during this year anyway? I'm due for late June.

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Yo. I get 57 in ten days, and 60 on May 1.

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Feb 10th, May 10th for me.

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Feb 23rd, May 23rd for me.

Wow, absolutely fantastic rewards. Really, shockingly amazing. This so radically redefines the builds of so many of my characters, I'm not quite sure where to begin. Travel as early as level 6, essentially an extra power pick for a lot of characters and a significant ease in picks during the pre-20 crunch. Just... wow.

The tailor thing is also extremely nice. I have quite a few free tailor tokens on some of my characters, but when I make new ones, the price of a costume change is pretty striking really.

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So, what's needed to get into the Open Beta? I've got a Mac based friend who's been dying to play CoH since launch and peaked his interest when he learned the game was being ported. Can I send him the client link and let him try it out or does he need a Windows account to login to the beta?

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He/she needs a current authentication method to any of the clients.

Meaning: an account.

Sign him/her up for the trial (get the goodies from it) and let him/her create a character on test. It may take 24-48 hours for the trial account to carry over to test, but it is a free trial. Free trial restictions apply.

Or, be a bud, and have him/her get the test client, you sign in on test on his/her Mac with your account (EULA restrictions, you use your account to show him/her the game, don't give him/her your account/password).

With Closed and Open beta timelines, I fully expect the full Mac Client to be available end of year, beginning of next.

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I wasn't sure a Trial Account had access to test to be honest. If it does, that works great

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I think the new story arcs should have been written for the 45+ heroes and had more villains' stories. There are plenty of story arcs at lvl 20 to 25 on the hero side and not enough for those us 45+ heroes or villains in general.
My two cents.

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I'm reasonably certain the arcs are in the range they are in so that they can use the Warriors. I'm pretty sure they don't spawn much higher than 25.

So, what's needed to get into the Open Beta? I've got a Mac based friend who's been dying to play CoH since launch and peaked his interest when he learned the game was being ported. Can I send him the client link and let him try it out or does he need a Windows account to login to the beta?

I just wanted to comment on the new hero side storyarcs. I'll comment on villain side once I run them, but I thought I'd comment on what I've seen:

Daedalus

Honestly I was REALLY disappointed here. The quality of missions in the game has improved every issue by leaps and bounds, but these arcs felt like a return to the dull "go here, kill that" kind of missions that plague CoH story arcs. There's even a really long and dull kill all at the end of the second one that I thought we were past.

More troublesome, I don't really get WHAT's happening here. Why is Arachnos in Cimerora? Why would they go to that specific time period? Cimerora makes sense if you're there on behalf of the Midnight Club, but is Arachnos suddenly a part of the club? The Malta arc runs into similar problems; I just didn't get why this group would care about a small slice of European history. It just feels inconsistent and generic and a significant step back compared to recent story arcs.


Midnight Club Arcs

So, my little rant above? None of that applies here. All three of these arcs are pretty fun and have some great moments:

-Evil Music arc:

I want to point out something special that happened during this arc. During one mission you go to try and capture the villain, only to find they've already left. After discovering this you need to find clues where to go next. I LOVE this. For the first time I feel like I'm really driving the story; taking the initiative and finding out what to do next without relying on the contact.

So here's what happened. I ran this mission, got the clues, figured out where they were pointing and rushed to Talos to apprehend the villain. Only when I got to Talos did I remember how the game works and noticed "Return to Contact" in my mission list. I really really hope more storyarcs can be this self driven in the future. Absolutely loved this.

-Magic Man arc

So this arc is fun simply because you get attached to the villain and he's quite memorable. The last fight is fantastic and put a huge grin on my face. One thing I'd like to point out about it that makes it special as far as I'm concerned is that you don't beat the villain on pure brute force. Technically, you do, but if you're paying attention to why you finally stop him, its more like a good Batman story, where an apparently unstoppable foe is foiled through a flaw in their plan. Bravo. This one went straight into my favorites list.

-Warrior Crown arc

Yeah! Warriors! Nice to see these guys finally get an arc where they're not cannon fodder. Ok, so the Atta map is more tedious than ever and really drags the pace of this arc down. I was really down on this arc, but the last mission is a lot of fun. The story isn't quite as interesting as I'd hoped, with no real significant twist, but the last battle is extremely fun and really pushes you. My least favorite of the 3, but still a memorable arc.

So... yeah. Daedalus is definitely a disappointment for me, but the Midnight Club arcs are a total success. I do get the feeling that the Villain side story for Cimerora might be better, but I'll save the feedback there for when I get a chance to run those arcs.

EDIT: Moved this to the Story Arcs thread.

I got a good laugh out of this one:


Missions Ambush

Server: Freedom
Zone: RWZ
Character name: Lunar Seraph
Time: 4:08 pm CST
Location: In Mission
Mission: Steal data from Longbow
Mission Contact: Gaussian
Bug Description: In the mission, there's 3 blinkies you need to click to finish. After each blinky, an ambush appears along with a Warden boss. Instead of conning as a foe, each of these Warden's spawned as a Pet for me. By the time I finished the mission I had a huge group behind me, as randomly, other NPCs from teh ambush spawn would con friendly as well.
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