[Heroic] [35-54] Future Storm's Past - Arc ID: 32791

[Ankylosaur]

 The Dark Watcher has called you to Vanguard. He believes that you hold the key to beating The Coming Storm. Explore your future's past! [SFMA]

 

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Releasing this in an Alpha state. I think the text is complete, though it could be tightened, as are the mechanics. A little worried the mobs are too tough so will be doing several runs to try them out. If you are curious about the ideas or inspirations I share those and spoilers below...

 

Inspirations

 

• Spoiler

   

  • Space Maps! - I have wanted a good reason to use the space maps, because - Space!
  • Loregasm - I recently stumbled upon the Lore AMA on Paragon wiki. It was great to get a glimpse into what the future plans for The Coming Storm were including the ultimate plan of summoning Rulalruu in to fight them off in Kallisti Wharf (2015 big description of the TF). So I thought I would take a stab at making it happen. The closest you can get to Kallisti Wharf is the related office maps and of course it requires a new mob:
  • The Battalion - In making this mob it was pretty wide open as to what they would look like and what they would do. Of course I have made A LOT of mobs now, so wanted to work with costumes I had not used much of, and with the space travelling species theme went sort of space/tech/alien related. In the end I really liked their look, anchored in the Tech Knight set, though I know it is much more Mars Attacks than anything the devs would have done. Wide open also meant I could try to include some powers I have not used as often, so I leant on energy-powers (Kinetic Melee, Energy Aura) that I had not done much with, thematically related powers - plus weapons because I could use more costume parts. 🙂
  • Memento - Of course if this is happening in the future, there needs to be a story element that makes that happen. Rather than straight up time travel, I came up with the idea that you were sent back in time to carry the memories of how to beat the Battallion into the past - though you don't know who sent you or why you can't just remember them. The Dark Watcher just wants you to relive them in his Simmem device. While I liked the idea, this had the unintended consequence of making it a lot less high stakes as its all a memory sim.
  • Mechanics - Played with a few things so it was not all just a series of fights, including trying defendable objects again. This time I think it works better as it is a small open map (Space!) and its only in one mission. I have 3 triggered off each other. If people fail it often, I can scale back to 1. The Rikti Bombs do fall from the sky upon entry which was a cool effect if the player happens to notice it.  
  • Ads - I managed to cross-promote a couple of my other arcs within clues.
  • The Letters - Of course much of the content related to The Coming Storm also includes these Ouroborous letters from a mysterious sender. I deviated from the Lore AMA here and have a different person sending you letters. You finally find out (my version) of who! 
  • Allies - Aliens, the mysterious Dark Watcher who knows things, and some pitches in the Lore AMA for Lady Grey (though I went a different way) made Vanguard a natural fit, and I got to use the Vanguard map that I wanted to use in Policemen vs Aliens.

   

   

 

In the end this came together fairly quickly. If you explore it I hope you enjoy it! If you see typos or mechanic issues, please share feedback and I will fix it right up! (and be kind with stars in the mean time 🙂 )

 

 

 

Edited September 11, 2020 by Ankylosaur

[Ankylosaur]

So after I consider something "Alpha" It means I have the main skeleton of story and interactions together. Now that the core is setup, I play through it and look for things I need to spice it up a bit.

 

Here's what I am thinking so far - and applied...

 

• Spoiler

   

  • Mission 1 has some battles - broke those into unique instances to give them some dialog.
  • Mission 2 is pretty straight-forward. Added in bosses to spice it up
  • Misson 3 requires some Steve Sheridan foreshadowing - added story clues.
  • Mission 4 again - multiple battles - decided not to sprinkle in dialog. I realized part of the reason the defendable objects work is that you often have allies from the battles (that are over) that intercept the ambush - a good thing really.
  • Mission 5 - after re-reading the 2015 lore AMA, I realize that Steve Sheridan should be the main villain here - make him and sprinkle in more plot points. I needed to give the main villain better motive so am glad I have someone more interesting to do that with. Also Shiva is bombarding Kallisti with meteors from space trying to keep the Rularuu portal closed, but you realize that it's the things in this mission that is actually keeping it closed - that needs to be better fleshed out. So I did those things. Also found a white board I did not mean to have there and pushed the rescues to the middle so you have to earn them a bit more instead of just kite them around from the start. Changed the model for the Portal Jammers too. 
  • Battalion - though the archers worked from a costume standpoint as there is a tech knight bow - they did not fit with the energy theme of the Battalion so turned them into a female set of kinetic meleers.

   

   

Edited September 12, 2020 by Ankylosaur

[Ankylosaur]

Moved it to Looking for Feedback (Beta) now - I think it's done. 

 

As always - open to feedback to refine it further.

 

The latest tweaks

 

• Spoiler

   

  • M5
    • Tweaked some of Steve's powers
    • Broke the portal Jammer objective into 6 separate ones so they could have dialog.
  • M4
    • Added dialog to the bomb attackers 
    • Added dialog to GM ally
    • Added dialog to just one of the battes of each ally group 
  • M1
    • Put in a few more battles for added life
  • Battalion
    • Made all riflers beam rifle - so they could use the shard cannon and related costume parts and get power synergies  (previously had some robotic pulse rifle types in there)
    • Made armor a bit more distinctive for Melee non shield types with ascension parts
    • In the end
      • Shield types - tech armor only
      • Energy melee weapon types - ascension accents
      • Beam rifle types - Shard Cannon and Elemental Armor accents with cosmic corsair / tech armor
      • Kinetic Melee and Dual Pistols - Cosmic Corsair accents 

   

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Edited September 13, 2020 by Ankylosaur

[Kyksie]

What's there to say? Yet another very well done arc, with excellent writing, and tons of detail. The difficulty isn't too high, and no maps have Objective Overload. As with previous arcs, my only compliant is that it tells you what your character thinks and says at times, which tends to annoy Real Roleplayers, like Shadowsilk Nightprowler, the immortal werewolf who sees everything as a snack, or Lady Galatea Ravenhair, the immortal succubus who sees everything as... um... yeah.

 

At this point I'd like to thank the people in this forum who consistently poop out terrible arcs (you know who you are). Without them, my life as an AE reviewer would be terminally boring, since Ankylosaur arcs never have any major flaws to make fun of.

 

Oh yeah, one minor glitch: the second mission tells you to lead an escort to a console, but instead you lead her to the exit. Yeah, there's something.

[Ankylosaur]

Thanks! glad to hear it was mostly issue free. Hope it was fun story too... 🙂

 

I looked to try to fix that issue you mentioned. I actually don't have any escorts in mission 3 because I found them to be buggy.  (Mission 2 is just collections so nothing to see there.)

 

I do have allies though and suspect that's what you encountered as they are also buggy. So they are set to empty (no mobs guarding them) so when you approach them they say something. I also have them set to "Do Nothing" so they don't follow you around. 

 

So when you leave them they stay put, but when you return to them - they do in fact follow you - ignoring the do nothing. So the vanguard person who asked you to go sign in to the computer could end up following you into the back - going to the door to get there, Maybe that's what you encountered?

 

I should have probably had them all just say they were heading off to board a Rikti ship to join in on the raids on the Battallion's asteroid ships...

[Kyksie]

No it was that Paula chick. It tells you to escort her to a  Control Console, but you actually escort her to the mission exit.

 

[cranebump]

Yeah that’s from “Much Madness.” Paula is like right there next to the console, but the NAV point always spawns at the door when the console appears in the first room. The escort target location is clearly marked in mission text, but it just won’t locate the damned console. Gives the door for some reason. I’m loathe to move her because she consistently pops up in that opening room, which is right where I’d like her to be. Moving the console might put it in a weird location. But, yeah, it’s a thing. I left it as is because the spawn points are so consistent.

Edited September 20, 2020 by cranebump

[Ankylosaur]

OK - so that makes more sense. 🙂 There is a conspicuous absence of ray gun weilding space aliens in that screenshot! 🙂

 

I was also wondering where I was telling the player how they feel about something. Thanks @cranebump for clearing that up - it was not my arc at all. 🙂 

 

I did use a Kallisti map so easy to confuse.

 

I'll say the RWZ escort routes were all sort of messed up - I understand how annoying that can be for author and player... And that Seraph map from Hammigedon was escort waypoint madness too. Anyway - Future Storm's Past is ok at least.

Edited September 20, 2020 by Ankylosaur

[cranebump]

No aliens, but lots of gun-toting CoT “heretics.”:-)

[Darmian]

SERAPH map!  AAGH.  Trucks inside the damn building!

 

Though Ankylosaur and cranebump are my two first stops these days for AE.  

Edited September 21, 2020 by Darmian