ZamuelNow

After looking around the zone some more and looking at the other thread, Mercy Island has two specific groups of things changed in that some of it is the subjective feel of things and some of it is the actual mechanics. Subjectively, the feel of things is what brought me to create the thread. Even though I played during I21, the overwhelming majority of my villains were created before then. "Why does Mercy feel wrong" is what led me to make this thread, especially after noticing I was getting nostalgia as I moved through Port Oakes and Cap Diable. Feel/subjectiveness is the harder argument to argue due to people simply being different. There's two arguments I've seen that have some merit. The first is the concept of not going backwards and instead progressing the plot forwards. Somewhat fair and part of the suggestion for an Echo instead of reverting the zone. Though...I recently visited Echo: Atlas Park and noticed that though the buildings have different textures, it's not that different a layout. It isn't like they moved Ms. Liberty and the starting contacts to right outside the hazard zone entrances. The second subjective argument, and the one I'm sympathetic to, is that they like the revamp because they weren't invested in the Arachnos storyline. The revamp halfway serves them since they start in the city instead of Fort Darwin but the three starting contacts are all based on you being from Paragon and being rescued by Arachnos. Mechanically, there's more differences than people realize (and those people dismiss). One has been called out in that by putting the hospital on the northern wall of the Mercy neighborhood, it puts it in a more centralized location in the zone. But there's other actual problems. A valid piece of advice new people are taught in CoX is learn how to navigate. Though it's far easier due to all the temp powers, learning your distance helps you die less. Darwin's Landing has wider streets than Mercy City so navigation is more dangerous after the revamp. Speaking of danger, some of the newer spawns have freakish fast respawn timers. There's also the fact that the Mercy neighborhood has almost no landmarks. It's a weird decision to change the starting location but not make it easier to navigate. So, taking all this into account, what do we do? An Echo allows those who want the old version of Mercy, if you take into account that Atlas got to keep it's contacts. Modern Mercy probably needs some spawn timer adjustments, changes to spawn placements, and a few altered textures to buildings and signs so it is easier to navigate. And perhaps making the old Fort Cerebus music the music for the Mercy neighborhood. The fact that Echo: Atlas and modern Atlas have similar music styles makes Mercy Island's new music feel even more weird of a decision.

I forget the exact way you reorganize things but I can try to do some digging to see if it's listed somewhere. What order are they in on your design window?

Talos Vice is on HC servers but I don't know if @Police Woman still plays.

Redside, Indomitable, and non peak hours. I really don't know what else to suggest off the top of my head. I wonder if the allowed size was made too big. The mapserver error is almost sounding like what happens with larger bases.

Interesting. I guess there's the thought process of a rampable mechanic compared to one you can mostly ignore to focus on the rest of the game. Did Fury's numbers get changed after the game was originally sunset? I could never wrap my head around it (which is weird since I love Dominators and Domination is effectively Fury for control).

Generally curious, what makes Brutes more new player friendly than Scrappers?

It'll take me a bit but I'll work through the other thread. Though I've glanced and seen some comments about the content being the same but there were some mechanical differences. But ignoring that, I wonder if there's some sort of middle compromise to figuring out a reversal versus a modification of the zone.

I guess this is the PSA to always test your arcs when a new issue drops. It was a thing back in the retail days. On the other stuff Ankylosaur mentioned, what are your computer settings and what zone do you usually edit your arcs in? What server shard? While lots of things can cause a mapserver error, I wonder if we can narrow things down to at least get the arc in a state where you can open it to make edits.

The upgrades actually now apply defensive buffs that can be enhanced. Ninjas are notoriously glass cannons but they did get some buffs recently.

I could be wrong but I thought the Echo zones were made due to major changes to zone geometry (or outright revamps like Rikti Crash Site -> Rikti War Zone).

I present this as a question because of I know it can be argued both ways. "Oh it's just a villain zone" I figure a lot of people will argue. The stronger argument is that, in comparison to Atlas Park, not as much has drastically changed with the geometry and that changes are in the enemy spawn placement, hospital location, and starting point. Yet, what did change was the whole vibe of the zone. Progressing from an Arachnos base across a destroyed to the city in the Mercy neighborhood worked for the whole Darwinism thought process of Lord Recluse. And the layout is designed with that in mind. If you follow the main roadway out of Fort Darwin you eventually come to a point roughly at location [-1980.4 96.0 -1971.4] and can gaze at the clock tower. It's the center of the island and the road is more destroyed coming from the Mercy neighborhood. The other alteration is the music. The new music is "good" from a composition standpoint but it leans on the gloomy atmosphere that Mercy doesn't need help with. The post I21 music is a departure from the primarily rock theme the Rogue Islands use and did away with the the musical piece that's the source of the villain mission clear music. Creating an echo creates a new opportunity for badges. It's odd that the clock tower is a noteworthy location but it doesn't have an exploration badge. There's other interesting points of interest not covered by exploration badges in the zone like the areas where people have fished sharks.

There's a Mercy dock with water but I forget the exact name. It's fairly small but I think it worked fine last I checked. Granted, it's not much bigger than the Tiny offices. This what I noticed when testing the Smelting Cauldron on beta. I wonder what is letting us set too many. Honestly makes me wonder if there's spots where the original devs meant to set things to 1, 2, or 3 and they accidentally fat fingered 11.

On disillusionment, I'd say embrace your inner Natural origin and always have a plan. At the least, pay it forward and play other arcs with low plays.

There are a lot of things AE needed and some are rather specific. But some are broad. One thing I'd like to suggest is a sort of Objective and Collectible Proliferation. There's things both in missions and available to base builders that would be useful for collectibles, destructibles, and contacts. Some can be ruled out due to the need to adhere to Wall and Floor placement and for obvious size constraints. While "easy" is a loaded word when it comes to programming, it seems like an easy way to give Architects more options. It could lead to things like a phone booth contact in a silver age story to a chalk outline glowie to represent a dead body without using workarounds to get an ally to lay still. Even using various home pieces on the Tiny offices to fudge an apartment.

Hello! Saw you mention your arc on Discord, saw it had no plays, and figured I'd run it. Best to foster more stories in the system. While there were a few typos, I think it's best if I point out some of the broader things first: Difficulty will depend on level and why I always advocate on limiting arc level, even if the level is fairly broad. The robot in the fourth mission who was using a Mastermind powerset kinda feels like too much when combined with ambushes. That said, I was playing on a sub 30 character without heavy crowd control so that can be hard to judge. Everything else seemed manageable. Some of the Navigation Text titles could stand sprucing up. Instead of "3 Defeat Completion Target" you could do something like "3 Flex-Bot 5000s to train with". Lean into it. You do some of this with patrols that debate between leg day and arm day so it's just that some of the Navigation Texts and maybe some of the boss dialogue that needs more. On typos:

I think there's two halves of the system in AE and they don't always talk to each other. I saw this first when testing the Smelting Cauldron on Beta. The editor claimed a massive number of collectibles could be put in the mission but only about 15 front and 15 back actually showed up. When making minor changes to an arc on the Nerva map, I took the time to look at what the editor claimed. It claimed there was a front and a back, which doesn't truly exist on most outdoor maps as we know. But the preview mini map in the editor showed the icon in green...which is the color for things coded "front". Those who have been here for a bit, what outdoor maps have come out in the Homecoming era that are "correct" instead of having the standard outdoor map problems?

When creating an arc, players have the option to select three keywords from a few columns. I'd like to suggest "Street Level" for the center column. There are times when Save the World/Rule the World aren't appropriate and the stakes are smaller. On the subject of maps, there are a few that could use some alteration to better assist stories. Starting out, I think the two pawn shop maps could stand to have Ally/Escort locations to represent hostages and informants. Poking around, the coordinates that seem like they might work best are: Pawn Shop 01 [-123.8 0.0 -93.9] Pawn Shop 02 [-126.2 0.0 -24.6] or [-47.5 0.0 -173.7]

As a whole, I think I'm just oddly ultra paranoid about "getting things right" with this arc. It's odd since back on Live this wasn't my first arc and I wasn't paranoid about my first arc. Timing might be part of the issue since Homecoming has had servers running AE for a few years while my joining the game in I14 means I originally wasn't as far behind everyone. Carriage return error has been fixed. Contemplating other small tweaks but they'd really be nitpicks.

Sorry for the delay in replying but thanks for running ...Indelible Curse of Hate.

I've seen the video on slides and asking which method was used here, two planes in a V or multiple jars? How was the circling shark pit achieved?

Hmm. Nothing but bosses was something I thought I fixed that kept wanting to reset itself during testing. I might need to delete and rebuild that group from scratch but I'll probably wait to read the rest of your review first in case something else weird is going on.

All of my villains, from the most Saturday morning to the most heinous, are more than glad to punch Nazis. I haven't looked at the mission in question (because my villains won't work for Nazis) but being more overt with the 5th Column's racism probably helps separate them from the Council. Council probably still has a number racists within it but they leaned harder into the vampire/werewolf/luchador side of things.

Oh wow, the revamp of the AE in RWZ is classy. Almost wish a couple more of the buildings got revamped like this.

Ah, thank you. General was pretty lively just now so not having everyone hidden in too many hidden channels is probably for the best.

I personally wish there was a better choice for the first map, especially as the first map of the arc. Every other other map in the arc does what I want. Still, it's an outdoor map with no modern architecture that looks distinctly different from the other outdoor map the arc uses so it could be far worse. Glad you enjoyed it, though. I watched a playthrough of a different arc and the sheer difference in narrative style had me wondering if the arc might seem outdated.