Piecemeal

I'm not a fan of that AE description for Odysseus either, btw. HOWEVER. I have a duty to preserve the legacy of this game, and *someone* at Paragon wrote that at some point, perhaps out of ignorance or perhaps out foreshadowing, either way, I have to honor it and write plot that either clarifies or debunks it. But I won't go in and retcon that description. Demon deals... one with Oranbega and one with Johnny Sonata is plenty. I don't want a hat trick on this one.

Well, thanks to AE, now I have ANOTHER wrench to fish out. Edit: And I was never going to retcon. 😄

You just scooped me on Monument Melee.

Necro edit: This idea has been tabled and will possibly expanded upon later.

I don't want you guys to think every villain I touch is gonna get broken up into a civil war. 😄

This is the feedback I crave 😋 This logic is irrefutable, and only steers my thoughts slightly left of center 😅👍

Odysseus shows us in Mortimer Kal's Strike Force that not only are they organized, but they run like a business, and that business is the acquisition, trade, and sale of magical relics. Which I always found curious, because until the Fists of Vulcan, they never really used any of them, aside from Heracles' use of the Ring of Peebles. I don't think anyone would object to these pinnacles of human perfection being rewarded with the use of relics to augment their already formidable powers... would they? 🤭

*coughs*

I know a few things in closed beta went so horribly wrong on my end I'm glad you didnt see that aspect of my learning curve in Open. "This should do it!" "The arc is hardlocked and can't be completed without GM intervention now!" "EXPLETIVES! SO THAT WAS WHY THAT CLUE WAS THERE." -Excerpt from the personal diary of @Myrmidon

I also want to say that I am a pragmatic developer, an idealist, and a realist. These three mentalities often come into conflict, but there was some stuff that I acknowledged and decided to continue with. I know that not everything I did was popular, but the end result was rewarding because: 1) I saw a wider range of players tell me what they thought 2) I saw the range of reactions to things people liked 3) I was able to go back and determine a personal metric for how much is too much Sometimes, you really can't get the thing right until a couple of people really tear you down. And sometimes, you just don't consider all the angles. Flame me if you will, and I'm expressing humility and vulnerability in saying this: I didn't consider that someone's kid would be playing my arc and not catch context clues. (That Mander was Salamander. Nobody throw shade on that topic!) I didn't consider that people would be running this arc partially slotted, unslotted, or poorly spec'ed. I didn't consider that the difficulty would be accepted as so high. I could blame literally all of that on the feedback, but to some degree, I need to know these things. So, this is how I learn. Human beings learn through failure and pain, in my own opinion. I have no scientific facts to justify the claim. And while this was not, according to more than a few people by a bunch's opinions, a failure, the feedback was at times painful. And that was how I learned. Be kind, be gentle. I'm listening. Just because I didn't do the thing, doesn't mean I didn't listen, read, or internalize it for the future. It just didn't suit the moment, the story, or the timeline to make the change.

We did have an open beta here on Brainstorm.

Your commentary on Graveyard Shift is well-noted, and some changes are currently working through Closed Beta to make sure they stick. The player feedback in Beta was largely on lore and tone, and not so much on difficulty. I think most over there took their minmaxed builds to the test, and not a partially-slotted frankentoon with SOs, DOs, TOs and endurance issues in to test. As for changes Namely, Graveyard Shift gets easier. I'm currently gauging how much easier via player feedback at the moment. But I tested locally against an absurdly mis-slotted SO's-only Bots Mastermind, and things are manageable. Ambushes are reduced to a single wave in most instances. Zoombies do less damage but are more accurate and hit their friends too. Bosses have been tweaked to be more durable in some instances. The virus has been changed a bunch to be less brutal, working on a % chance rotation for an effect. The fire damage in Pathogen's warehouse is nerfed again, etc. Cortex has been given an aggressive re-education in his "No Kill Like Overkill" ambush strategy, which was 100% my oversight thinking that a squad of basically upright Rikti Monkeys couldn't do that much damage and would drop quickly due to their underling status. Vandal and Hopkins have been tuned - They were never (or rarely) enemies in regular soloable content and have had their output adjusted. It's not that I designed this content for uber toons working backward from the top of the bell curve, but rather that I had a very limited voice from the people at the bottom of the hill. And as previously stated, if I optimized a mission to be pleasantly soloable as a Emp/Rad defender at-level, or a Mind/Kin controller, or a Petless MM, a brute or blaster would laugh through the entire arc while handing out business cards and taking selfies with the corpses littered from wall to wall. It was an MMO, and it still is, and the hope is that you have at least one friend you can call in to help manage the mess, or to use the inspirations available to you when something bests you.

Thank you. Those arcs were expected to be a bit polarizing, and the next patch to them softens it up some more before I take a full step back from them. The future content will take bits and pieces of what I learned in those arcs. Their true 'flaws' are that they are packed with things I needed to try and do, to see if they could be done. It turned out to be a bit much in the package, but now the groundwork is laid for future arcs to use the tech that's already working and expand upon it, little bits of it here and there. I will still strive to add more things spread out across my work. But updating textures, tweaking maps, that's something that I want to include in every release. As far as those arcs, it was a rocky but strong outing for my initial introduction, but I think you'll find I rather elegantly addressed some of the bigger concerns by this next patch: How the Virus affects you How to counteract the virus Map density and Min/LT/Boss spreads (Unfortunately I will admit I like the rave too much to alter it more - I consider it a mid-arc crescendo before the second act) Team-friendly options to affect your gameplay options (In the investigation) Things I'll definitely keep doing: Divergent endings More callbacks, NPCs coming back with new purposes, and more pop culture references than is probably good for me More unique NPCs Global plot moving forward

There are more things coming, hopefully quicker since I know a bit more now than I did a year ago.

The plague has been reworked. It punishes less and the medical research lab is much better at counteracting it. The fire is being adjusted again. Cortex's ambush spawn was not properly behaving, but this didn't show up as often in beta testing. It's being adjusted.

Good point. Added some additional dialog in the mission opening to connect the dots:

I have some changes coming along, need to test them locally first. And I will happily re-write the failure part - that was added late in the development when I was told "Groundhog Day" repeat task on failure was not the way we wanted to go anymore as a design philosophy. I was fighting burnout at that point, and the writing suffered as I chiseled it in. I'll rewrite the dereliction and choke bits, gladly. I didn't intend for the tone it delivered. Come to think of it, have you ever stared at something long enough, or repeated a word enough times that it loses all meaning? I had been staring at these codeblocks for the better part of a year, largely alone. So everyone take a deep breath, we'll get through this, and the future content will blossom for it 🙂 --- Without going into specifics, the way the Viral Cocktail affects you will change (for the better), the disease-cancelling lab station buffs as well (For the better). Several fight mechanics on both red and blue are getting tweaked. One of the things I'm going to need going forward is arranging teams across a wide variety of builds during testing. Unenhanced, sort of enhanced, DO's, SO's, some IOs, IO'd out the yinyang, solo vs teams. I think the most ardent testers were of a certain build type, and difficulty feedback was more anecdotal than anything. And with those certain types of builds, and player experience, I think very, very few people failed Pathogen's mission as a result. Most people told me "I saw this glowie I couldn't click on so I made a mental note of where it was" or "I thumbtacked my map when I saw it" As for the long flight back from the hospital, fly to the north tram and take it to the south tram to reduce the amount of time to get back.

*looks in with hand-warming gestures*

I've got a bunch of changes coming, to continue to hone this experience for all players. Thank you all for your patience.

I was once told it wasn't possible - but I reported this once in 2006 as I swore it happened to me. I've never had it happen since, and I chalked it up to my own error. I figured I wasn't paying good attention to the details. I'm not saying the same of the OP, just sharing my own experience.

Immature Protectors are currently guarding Hopkins in Doc Buzzsaw's arc, level range 30-39. They won't be only there forever, though!

You know, fair point. I don't play MMs and never got any feedback in testing from one. I'll look into this.

I'm listening to your feedback, and will reiterate that these arcs are the exception, not the rule. Your first work is rarely the best work - but I would rather it stood as difficult content than change it right now. More normalized arcs with new mechanics are in the pipeline for the future that aren't as out-of-control as this one. I had a lot of nuances to learn.

To be fair... the subplot about Cortex getting Wicker Man'd by bees is entirely a bonus story. 😛