[Villainous] [41-54] The Genesis & Geneticists of The Coming Hamiggedon - Arc ID: 26387

[Ankylosaur]

Dr. Andros Soineanu's field research team has gone silent while investigating the Devouring Earth for Arachnos. Help him recover them and continue his research for Project Fury: Plant-Hybrids! - SFMA - Solo with provided allies.

 

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This arc is my attempt to make something new from the Devouring Earth and Hamidon lore. The DE is a tough group to make interesting because there is not much room to insert any personality or motivations. Fortunately, hidden in the mob are a couple of unusual things to tap into, and I came up with an idea to give them some ways for my mob to have a voice - but we'll see if it works or not. I had actually started the idea for this before the servers shut down, but other than the early mob design and a few maps, not much had been done. In fact, the story was very different, had a few different maps like Thorn Isle and The Abyss, and included the Circle of Thorns. Most of the invention and new direction has happened over the last couple of months. This has gone through hours of work and testing, but there are so many things to look at I am sure there is a typo or two somewhere - hopefully no glaring issues though.  A few of the AE quirks I just had to accept in the end as a trade off - I did my best to have no police cars inside of buildings but in the end there is only so much you can you do. 🙂 

 

Oh and I really hope we get the Nature Defender set one day - one of the mobs needs that. 🙂

 

The ending was a surprise, even to me - it just sort of revealed itself as the right choice given how everything came together, but we'll see how others feel.

 

Would love feedback as am I sure it bears several passes and more refinements. Your eyes and experiences will help make it much better.

 

If you give it a go - thanks in advance for trying it out!  

Edited April 25, 2020 by Ankylosaur

[Kyksie]

I tried this just now, and mission 2 glitched. Taking the hostages to the map exit didn't work; the waypoint was way off the map.

 

[Ankylosaur]

Thanks for the feedback. Was worried about that. I may need to switch them from escorts that you take to the mission door to allies and just force you to exit with them. That map is the one I had the most issues with - from mobs marked as front appearing in the back or middle, to the escort marker being off (for me it appeared as the exit of the building as opposed to the exit of the mission). But interesting maps can make for interesting missions, so wanted to leverage it.
 

I found if I took them to the Arachnos flier it register as mission complete, but obviously experiences vary. 

Edited April 26, 2020 by Ankylosaur

[Ankylosaur]

OK - hopefully fixed - realized the problem was that I required the player to exit at mission door in addition to escorting them there. Still some quirks with mob placement on this map, but hopefully you don't encounter them.

 

The waypoint is still broken, but the mission completes when you get them to the Flier and I hopefully have made that clear in the nav text. I tried the alternative of using allies and requiring exit and it was ok, but not what I was after.

 

Also made several other tweaks to bring a bit more life to the dialog.

 

Thanks again for the feedback! Pretty confident that the ride past mission 2 is smooth - the remaining maps are more predictable.

 

Hoping you give it another go!

Edited April 26, 2020 by Ankylosaur

[Kyksie]

I was able to complete it this time, and this is definitely a top-notch arc. Great writing, compelling characters, copious use of clues, no spelling errors, no time wasters. Let me restate that for emphasis; no time wasters. Even pausing to read all the dialog, including over a dozen clues, I was able to complete this in under 15 mins.

 

My only minor gripe is the morality. The player is cast as a villain (you're approached at random walking through Grandville) but throughout the arc the player doesn't act villainous, you're all "I'll help out, for SCIENCE!" Maybe you're a hero who just went to Grandville for coffee like Arbiter Sands does.

 

Anyway, this is a great arc that everyone should play!

Edited April 27, 2020 by Kyksie

[Ankylosaur]

Thanks for giving it a run through!

 

That's good feedback about the morality not sittign quite right with you. I struggled with the right balance of Soineanu's pursuit of knowledge and fame and how much he cared about making progress for the outcome vs. the recognition. The "For Science" bit was a nod to the awesome Von Grun contact and arcs. Should probably make a pass at the story to make Soineanu's motivations a bit clearer; I'll definitely need to make them a bit clearer for myself I think too first. 🙂 

[Ankylosaur]

Made several changes to the mobs to reduce the number of plant/mez type powers for the fisticuff-types. Really happy with where they ended up in my tests.

[Ankylosaur]

Made more changes  - mainly cosmetic and few little refinements, with the exception of mission 2

 

Spoiler

 

Mission 2  

This map continues to be bugged and hard to work with, but I had some ideas to make the experience a bit better - it was just the implementation that was frustrating. 🙂

• Lab folk - I had populated the SERAPH lab with Longbow, which was always kind of a placeholder. I had wanted to put in lab technician types , but was reluctant to create another mob, when I landed on an idea - possessed scientists! Story-wise, I made these SERAPH scientists willing to experiment on themselves - which only skews Kyksie's morality point above further out of whack, but at least the mission feels populated with "labish" types now.
• Unique Drs. - I had had a number of collection clues that had notes from lab doctors. Now that I had a SERAPH scientist mob, I converted those collection items into bosses which makes the entire experience richer.  
• Backup Bosses - positioning of the longbow and ppd bosses is still an issue. They appear all over the place -inside and outside - positioning is of little use. They trigger off of rescuing the escorts so I made the captors say something about that.
• PPD Cars and Vans - the trigger for these is Captain Middleton, who you meet on the way out as occasionally they seem to spawn inside of the lab (oh this map is frustrating. 🙂 ).  I think I have them all outside now, but you really are only likely to see the ones on the way to the Flier - I'm presuming players leave with both escorts in tow and never go back in the lab so they never have to wonder how the PPD got a SWAT van in there.
• Broken Waypoint - Not much I can do about this one - the waypoint is tied to the door to the lab instead of the mission exit. Only thing I could do is be more explicit in the nav text.
• Outcasts - Using the free Outcasts group someone shared, I fit in a few captives for flavor in Steel Canyon to make it seem less lifeless at the start.
• Arachnos Cover Fire - I removed the battles I had included. I had them appear to show Arachnos' presence, but they were always complete by the time I ran into them - in the end they were sadly pointless. I thought of using Patrols for Arachnos' presence, but with me spawning so many longbow and ppd bosses, they'd just get smushed without a boss of their own, so seemed pointless, as did adding in Arachnos bosses who just stand around. I might just change out the Outcasts "Free Captive" mobs to Arachnos with some captured Longbow or PPD to get them on the board.
• Escort AI - the AI seems to stall from time to time - so its good they are following you because of mind control helmets - the tech is obviously a little wonky. 🙂

 

 

Edited May 14, 2020 by Ankylosaur

[Ankylosaur]

Was pretty proud of this one, but it has not gotten very many plays and no in game Comments. Until tonight! Received an awesome comment  and was thrilled someone tried it out. Thought I would share in case it inspires another play or two...  

 

 

Comments like this make my day!  

 

Edited July 31, 2020 by Ankylosaur