Feedback: New Story Arcs

[The Curator]

Please use this thread to discuss the new story arcs from Shauna Braun and Bobby Curtin published in today's patch. Please note that they intentionally do not touch deep canon or advance the existing storyline, as we want to make sure our standard of quality is high enough first. The stories were written by @holymittens.

[Cinnder]

I plan to try both, but even before I do I want to praise you folks for taking the gutsy move to create content that's not generic all-alignment content.  Personally, I want more alignment-specific content myself.  Would be really interested to see a single story that had missions from all 4 viewpoints.

[Gulbasaur]

Just completed Bobby's arc.

 

A few thoughts:

• I really liked the variety of missions and of settings. Nothing felt cookie-cutter.
• The ending was very strong. I liked how the clues were handled. It felt like an RPG, which was great as a lot of the dialogue in CoH feels inconsequential.
• Good use of NPCs in storytelling.
• Good use of speech bubbles.
• The ending was clear - I knew I had to make a choice and that was well done.
• The badge is well-named (little thing, but it shows attention to detail).
• No kill-all missions ❤️
• No named female characters until the very end, but the one that's there is important.

Well done to the writers, level designers and everyone involved. It was a great little experience and I look forward to more!

Edited October 1, 2019 by Gulbasaur

[Hedgefund]

For Shauna's arc, I got a "mission fail" the 3 times I ran it.  Note - I never failed it.

 

Edited to add - I did get expected rewards and badges, so I'm not saying this was a catastrophic bug.  

Edited October 1, 2019 by Hedgefund

[Widower]

3 minutes ago, Hedgefund said:

For Shauna's arc, I got a "mission fail" the 3 times I ran it.  Note - I never failed it.

 

Edited to add - I did get expected rewards and badges, so I'm not saying this was a catastrophic bug.  

IIRC, the way that the final mission works is that if you pick the "wrong" choice at the end (from the contact's point of view, anyway) you fail it, because that's just how branching paths have to work in CoH. So, WAI.

[Cinnder]

Just finished the vigilante mission.  (I can't type that word without hearing Posi's odd pronunciation!)

 

I chose the option that Shauna didn't like but didn't get a Misson Failed message.

 

As for feedback, I liked the story and the unexpected cutscene, though not so much a fan of the myriad ambushes.  I'd say it fits well with the feel of the improved content we were starting to get just before shutdown.  If this is the sort of thing we have to look fwd to with Homecoming, then the future looks bright.

[Rikmach]

It does make sense:  from the perspective of the person who gave you the mission, you did fail.

[Cinnder]

Just finished the rogue mission.  I liked this one better, because the content seemed more varied, though the difficulty ramps up suddenly at the end with no warning.

 

One small complaint: unlike the vigilante mission, which takes place in a zone where the mobs are grey to you, the rogue mission is located in an area with enemies ranging all the way up to orange.  Given the significant amount of travel between missions, this raises the overall difficulty a bit.

[Shoulung]

I switched over to vigilante alignment on a level 23 stalker using Null the Gull and attempted to use the contact finder to locate Shauna Braun, but she didn’t show up.

[justicebeliever]

2 minutes ago, Shoulung said:

I switched over to vigilante alignment on a level 23 stalker using Null the Gull and attempted to use the contact finder to locate Shauna Braun, but she didn’t show up.

The missions start at lvl 25

[Shoulung]

Yes, just noticed that! Time to see if I have a level 25 toon 

[TraumaTrain]

Do the badges award to everyone on the team, or just the mission owner?

[MetaVileTerror]

Mission 2 of Shauna's arc has a bank robbery; but the guards start as hostile.  I think it may have been a good opportunity to implement Neutral- or even Friendly-coded guards, who turn hostile if you move past them or exhaust all dialogue tree options with them*.  Also, when the Longbow ambush comes in, they identify the player-character by name, and yet outside the mission all PPD and Longbow remain friendly.  It would obviously be problematic to have the factions turn hostile, and Detective Davids does lampshade this later on, it might be nice to have something else to hint at the possibility that Longbow and the PPD are uncertain of your identity earlier on.

 

*with the dialogue being something along the lines of:

"Hold it right there.  This is a restricted area."

- Explain that you're here to search for evidence.

\ "Not without a warrant you aren't.  We have everything under control here.  Now please, move along."

- Suggest you're here to provide the guards with support.

\ "Thanks, but we're under a private contract.  You'll need to go to our head office and speak with the Powered Operative Outreach Programme agent there."

- Lie about starting a new account.

\ "Well, if you have an account, then please go back to the front desk and have the on-duty bank manager bring you back here with the appropriate escort."

-- Looks like there's no way to convince these guards you're supposed to be back here.

 

Mission 3; councilman Stone "slouches back against a wall" despite standing in the middle of the room.  Some other emotive text might be more appropriate, such as "slumps his shoulders" or something to that effect.

 

The mission-accept texts were a little iffy on player agency, but they definitely did not cross the line in to Dr. Graves / Fallout 4 territory!

 

Overall, despite all my critical feedback above; I'd like to say that this is some very nice work on Shauna Braun's arc.  I especially like how the post-arc Contact contact text is ambiguous toward either ending of the arc, and the branching dialogue with Davids looks really impressive!  The ending cutscenes work nicely and give some excellent dramatic closure.  Frankly, this arc is better than most anything produced during Live, in my opinion.  I'd really like to see the guts of this arc, if possible.  It would be an excellent teaching tool for all other potential content contributors.

 

When I have time tomorrow, I'll try to tackle the Rogue Contact and post further feedback.

[Razor Cure]

Are both of these in Oro?

[Hedgefund]

43 minutes ago, Razor Cure said:

Are both of these in Oro?

Yes

[Shoulung]

So, ran the Braun arc on a stalker, then I had to run it again on a sentinel because the D-bag didn’t cop to the murder. I’d really like the option to break into jail and kill him after that.

[InfamousBrad]

In the Bobby Curtain story arc, the final boss is one heck of a bullet sponge. On my partially-IO'ed bots/FF mastermind, there was never any doubt who was going to win, but both fights took forever.

[holymittens]

8 hours ago, MetaVileTerror said:

Overall, despite all my critical feedback above; I'd like to say that this is some very nice work on Shauna Braun's arc.  I especially like how the post-arc Contact contact text is ambiguous toward either ending of the arc, and the branching dialogue with Davids looks really impressive!  The ending cutscenes work nicely and give some excellent dramatic closure.  Frankly, this arc is better than most anything produced during Live, in my opinion.  I'd really like to see the guts of this arc, if possible.  It would be an excellent teaching tool for all other potential content contributors.

 

When I have time tomorrow, I'll try to tackle the Rogue Contact and post further feedback.

 

Thanks for the feedback and praise. This was the first arc I worked on, so some of the issues you raised were due to me not knowing the full possibilities of the system, so hopefully future arcs will feature more dynamic stuff like you mentioned.

[Cinnder]

29 minutes ago, InfamousBrad said:

In the Bobby Curtain story arc, the final boss is one heck of a bullet sponge. On my partially-IO'ed bots/FF mastermind, there was never any doubt who was going to win, but both fights took forever.

 

With my blaster, there was plenty of doubt, especially when the boss did that major heal in the middle of the fight.

 

I'm thinking this deserves a bit of that orange text warning solo players of an EB to come.

[Chuckers]

Okay finished both arcs last night/this morning, through Oro. I want to run them both again for different endings. First the "critiques":

 

Bobby's arc:

• When talking to the warrior boss (I couldn't spell his name if I tried), one of the speech bubbles has the word "go" in it and I believe it should be "got" because the sentence is really awkward otherwise. 
• The final boss was tough, especially with the ending I received. I did die once. She may be tougher than she should be? Or she has too much end drain in her abilities? And she has way too much accuracy, it seemed like she never missed.

Shauna's arc:

• The second mission (I think, sorry) seemed to be loaded with too many orange lts. Especially when they're yellow in the other missions.
• In the bank mission, I opened a vault and ambushes spawned, but I don't know if they were going to stop spawning and there was just enough time after the 3rd spawn to open the safe. 
• The ambush in last mission comes when you're not expecting it (obviously, it's an ambush) but you probably have engaged the enemies right after the ambush trigger. Thus causing a really big group of enemies to fight. I didn't have a problem because of my powers, but a "squishy" might. 
• In Frost's dialog, 3rd bubble I believe, there's a word or words missing.  After he says "You didn't". (Sorry again for not being more specific)

 

Praise time: The stuff above is really minor. I greatly enjoyed both arcs. I liked the fact that since they're Vigilante/Rogue arcs you have choices that are not "morally" available to Heroes/Villains. It makes for a very refreshing sense of game play.  Bobby's is more "fun" and Shauna's is more serious. They made me want to run them again because I truly want to experience the different endings. The cut scene in Shauna's arc - I felt like I wanted to find out that the Detective was on the take as well.  The writing is really good and very much in the flavor of the game. Kudos to HolyMittens for keeping the spirit alive.

And to whomever chose the doors for the arcs: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for keeping them close together and in the same zone. (Thank you to HolyMittens for writing the arcs to take place in the same zone as well!)

I look forward to more of these new arcs, it's nice that the middle levels got some love. 

 

[holymittens]

1 hour ago, Chuckers said:

Bobby's arc:

• When talking to the warrior boss (I couldn't spell his name if I tried), one of the speech bubbles has the word "go" in it and I believe it should be "got" because the sentence is really awkward otherwise.

Can you double check what dialogue option you chose to get that? The only one I see with "go" in it is him saying "Go on then."

 

 

Quote

 

Shauna's arc:

• The second mission (I think, sorry) seemed to be loaded with too many orange lts. Especially when they're yellow in the other missions

 

We don't set how enemies con in the missions. If this happens, it was probably just bad luck for you.

Quote

• In Frost's dialog, 3rd bubble I believe, there's a word or words missing.  After he says "You didn't". (Sorry again for not being more specific)

 

If you mean Rider, I could not find him using the phrase "You didn't" at all. Could you double check and provide more details?

[Rigged]

Did the Rogue arc.

 

With respect, your writing is significantly better than your sense of game balance. I don't feel it is very reasonable to expect a lvl 25-29 character to solo a roomful of Legacy Chain (including a boss) all at once, especially since it wasn't actually the climatic fight - to clarify, I had set my difficulty at +0/x1. Now, I ran the arc with my only rogue toon, which happened to be an exemplar'ed lvl 50 TW/Bio scrapper with a billion inf IO build, so I just AoE'ed them all to bits while their rocks whiffed (Because of this, I may have missed how difficult it might have been to defeat the actual final boss, or the large number of PPD mobs in the earlier mission). However, if I had gone in with a squishy defender I suspect I would be cursing at you right now. Please do consider allowing the spawn system to handle mob balance, flawed as it may be.

 

On the other hand, I liked the writing very much. Conversations were extremely amusing, especially regarding the Warrior boss's "family vacation" and the entire thing with the Family boss. The moral dilemma is a little cliche, but as with most CoX arcs the story is really all about the NPCs (in this case the final boss), not the player. From that perspective, it's significantly more interesting. I do however approve of the "in-between" moral options at the end, where you get something for your "mercy" - too often, moral choices in video games are binary, lack nuance, and ridiculous - the most egregious example of which I can recall is "Cure the little girl vs Murder the little girl" in Bioshock. I am very happy that my greedy rogue can try to weasel her way into a payoff while sating her conscience.

 

Incidentally, I did the arc twice, taking the same end choice, because it was clear that an action I chose in an earlier mission changed the response of the final boss. This is fantastic, in my opinion, because it is a very good use of branching options that can convey a sense of consequence for earlier actions, something that gives me a lot of hope for future stories.

 

Lastly, and this is a little off topic, but I do hope that future arcs that involve actual Villains won't solely be driven by a mere profit motive - this is perfectly fine for Rogues (in this case), but it annoyed me to no end that the vanilla CoV arcs were almost entirely about scoring some cash. CoX in general also suffers from having most stories feel rather impersonal for the player - we stumble into someone else's tragedy/stuggle/story and go in to meddle, and none of the stories are really about us. The signature story arcs started to go against this trend (at least redside), and I would like to see more of that sort of story.

Edited October 2, 2019 by Rigged

[Chuckers]

42 minutes ago, holymittens said:

Can you double check what dialogue option you chose to get that? The only one I see with "go" in it is him saying "Go on then."

 

 

We don't set how enemies con in the missions. If this happens, it was probably just bad luck for you.

If you mean Rider, I could not find him using the phrase "You didn't" at all. Could you double check and provide more details?

 

For the first one, I misspoke. It was one of MY response choices to the Warrior guy. Something like "how do you think we got to this fight in the first place.. " I'll run it again tonight. 🙂

Okay on the enemies 🙂 It must have been my bad luck 🙂

 

Rider was talking about taking the evidence to the police. I'll try and get that ending again 🙂

[Chuckers]

I forgot to mention something in Bobby's arc.   In the council/swat mission, I really liked the optional save and how it affected the rest of the mission. I also liked that it wasn't part of the objectives. I think that's a cool idea that you run across something that's not mentioned and it will affect the mission or story. 

[nihilii]

I played the Vigilant arc and really enjoyed it. Especially the cutscene, which I thought was much better choreographed than the average Paragon Studios cutscene. Thumbs up!