Focused Feedback: The Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok (Villain Story Arc, Level 30-39)

[Jimmy]

This is a Focused Feedback Thread

• Please note that Focused Feedback threads are heavily moderated to ensure they remain on topic.
  • Any off-topic posts in these threads will be removed without warning.
  • The thread will be locked when no more feedback is required, but you are more than welcome to continue the discussion in a new thread.
• The most up-to-date version of the changes will be listed in the first post.
• The changes in each build will be posted as replies.
  • Most changes from the previous beta build are listed in green.
    • Green text will become white text in the next set of patch notes.
  • Any changes or fixes that are only relevant to the beta builds (ie: fixes / tweaks to new features) are listed in blue.
    • Blue text will be deleted in the next set of patch notes as it is only relevant to highlight changes between beta builds, not a changes from live.
  • Known issues are listed in purple.

 

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New Story Arc: The Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok (Villain, Level 30-39)

A notorious and well-admired sociopath of the Rogue Isles has put out a straight-forward distress call through the Broker network, asking individuals of highly dubious moral constitution to save her neck in the name of Science. Doc Buzzsaw is being stalked by a notable ne'er-do-well and the price on her head is significantly less than the value of preserving it. Villains of level 30 and beyond should seek her out in Sharkhead Isle, in the usual place, and relief will wash over you after the discovery that her attachment to bank accounts has disappeared in the face of her mortality, as an added bonus.

• Contact: Doc Buzzsaw, Sharkhead Isle
  • Listed in Ouroboros under Captain (Level 35-39) > The Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok (27.02)
• Chronologically this arc takes place after the Hero arc above
• This arc features new maps, new environments, two new enemy factions, a prison break, new badges, several intricate missions with new spawn behaviours and a very, very cryptic poem
• This story arc currently awards 20 merits for completion, and an additional 20 merits for the first completion
  • These values will be adjusted in a future update to line up with other content when we have enough data to calculate the average playtime for this arc

Changes in this build:

• Bonus merits awarded one-time have been corrected
  • 20 Merits for arc completion (Always)
  • 20 Merits for first time earning the arc's badge
    • This is a temporary bonus for i27 release until we get enough data to set a proper end-of-arc merits reward number based on completion time datamining)
• Mission 1
  • Cortex should not be able to succumb to murder anymore. For real this time.
• Mission 3
  • Pierce has given up on sitting down to inspect the Rikti tech.
  • The desk should only be interactable after the Kraken and the bees are defeated.
• Mission 5
  • Cortex clue should be granted after defeating him, and coming into proximity of him after he goes into the cell.
  • Dr. Vahzilok should speak with you up until the point you start fighting Cortex.

 

[Jimmy]

Build 1 - October 24th, 2020

Spoiler

New Story Arc: The Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok (Villain, Level 30-39)

A notorious and well-admired sociopath of the Rogue Isles has put out a straight-forward distress call through the Broker network, asking individuals of highly dubious moral constitution to save her neck in the name of Science. Doc Buzzsaw is being stalked by a notable ne'er-do-well and the price on her head is significantly less than the value of preserving it. Villains of level 30 and beyond should seek her out in Sharkhead Isle, in the usual place, and relief will wash over you after the discovery that her attachment to bank accounts has disappeared in the face of her mortality, as an added bonus.

• Contact: Doc Buzzsaw, Sharkhead Isle
  • Listed in Ouroboros under Captain (Level 35-39) > The Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok (27.02)
• Chronologically this arc takes place after the Hero arc above
• This arc features new maps, new environments, two new enemy factions, a prison break, new badges, several intricate missions with new spawn behaviours and a very, very cryptic poem

 

 

[Darkneblade]

It was certainly interesting arc. I dropped arc on freakshow part though. Too many ambushes for to my liking.

Also dc buzzard seems overpowered on sewer mission (kills boss on 2 hits sometimes 1) but since she teleports after opening the lab it is good compromise.

Only death I have so far is sewer part where too many rikti ambushes at you at once after lab is opens.

Otherwise it was interesting.

I did test on +1x8 with dark/dark troller though so it may require more testing.

[Lines]

Part way through but need to go to bed.

 

Overall, this is easily one of the best arcs in the game. I've had a clean run of it so far (but I spotted some things I want to try to see if I can break it). Doc Buzzsaw's dialogue is absolutely ace and she now stands higher than ever as the best character in the game.

 

Couple of teeny tiny typos:

Spoiler

'there has been' should be 'have been'

Spoiler

'The countess was none to pleased' should be 'too pleased'

 

Reading it again, the second paragraph, first sentence runs on quite a bit.

 

Pierce behaved a bit strangely here. She was aligned correctly when she spawned in but rotated twice.

Spoiler

 

As a final note for now.

Spoiler

The Hopkins ambushes were the greatest gift this arc could have ever given. ❤️

 

 

Edited October 25, 2020 by Lines

[Lockpick]

Took a level 50 Archery / TA Blaster to do this one.  Switched to Villain, went to oro, got the mission, and started.  Playing at default notoriety.

 

I am writing my thoughts as I do the arc and will post when complete.

 

Mission 1

The early verbiage told me this mission was going to be tough and to take friends.  I went solo, but that warning kept me on my toes. Entered the mission door and was immediately attacked. I realized as I was entering the mission that I only had EoE inspirations, so was exiting as I was attacked, so no harm.  I am curious how the mob saw me when I entered since I have 65' stealth.  Anyway, went back into the mission and slowly worked through it.  Because I went slowly and tactically this mission was fairly easy.

 

Nice mission, I liked the various choices the boss offered, dialogue was fine for the most part, but parts of it indicated that I had been a hero that put Dr. V in the Zig and had changed alignment.  Is that dialogue based on my character?  If so, very well done.  If it is standard dialogue, you are going to have conflicts with characters that have not done the TF or were not a hero that switched to Villain.

 

Mission 2

Dialogue indicates that I showed up in person even though I called the contact.  There is some dialogue that is incorrect:  "an apple's hit me on the head!" should be an apple has hit me on the head.

 

Nice mission, not a fan of rescue missions normally, but this one was pretty good.  The map was new to me, which was nice.  Mission was fine.  I cleared on the way in, so doing the rescue and having the victim follow me out was fine.

 

Called contact.  I really like the dialogue " Oh, and if you hear any odd noises, it's just the Cattleprod of Motivation being used. For science".  Very nice!

 

Mission 3

Very nice all around.  Dialogue was great, mission was nice with the support.  I was concerned that one of the 3 support guys might be defeated and how that would impact the mission, but it didn't happen.

 

Mission 4

Dialogue good as usual.  Buzz is sending me to gather material for her.  Not a fan of these types of missions. I will say at this point I am getting a little tired of the missions, so this arc may be a bit long or maybe my patience is lower as I get older.

• Loot council - Nice mission, good challenge
• Steal from Crey - Travel to Cap Au Diablo, up to this point have been in Sharkhead the entire time and not having to go to multiple zones has been a huge plus for me. Use mission TP power. Mission is fine.  Ambushes when fighting the boss were doable. Got an incarnate shard.
• Invite Bile to the Party - Back to Sharkhead. Use Team Transporter.  Hope there aren't more zones because I don't have a SG base on Beta and I am out of TP tools. Got an incarnate shard.  Seems like I am getting more than usual.  Dialogue was great.  Defeated TechDeck and he disappeared, but mission dialogue says I have to negotiate with him. Defeat ambushes and still can't find him.  Exit mission hoping it will solve problem, nope.  Logout and back in.  Do mission again.  This time I use Electrified Net Arrow to slowly take down his health and when he is defeated he stays there.  The ambushes while negotiating with Bile are a pain.  I think once you get to this point the ambushes should stop, so you can read the dialogue.

Nice dialogue!

[NPC] TechDeck: WAIT! Let's rap battle about this, homie!
[NPC] TechDeck: HAH HAH HAH! Oh, man! You really did a number on me.

 

Mission 5:

Arc is still going.  We are actually 7 missions in at this point because mission 4 was 3 separate missions.  I feel like I am doing a Task Force and not a story arc.  The dialogue is definitely making up for the length though.  I'm interested in seeing what's next.

Dialogue great, found Cortex, but he was blue and didn't have the option to defeat him.  Not a fan of rescue missions and would have preferred to hand Bile a TP device and let him TP out of there and end the mission there.

20 merits and a badge; took me 2 hours and 50 minutes.  I may try this again to see if I can reduce the time.  I think the merits are a little light for the time and number of missions.

 

Overall: 10/10

I thought this was great dialogue all the way through.  I only noticed one spelling issue and I was reading all the dialogue carefully (that I could see; there would have been options leading to dialogue I couldn't see).   The missions were fine, difficulty was fine for my character.  Might be tough for the level range for some characters.  The ambushes got old after awhile and I think it was a bit long.  There are some areas where the missions could be tightened up to save time.

 

It is obvious a lot of work and thought went into this arc and it is one of the better ones I have played in quite some time.  I believe my favorite arcs in the game are Graham Easton and Laura Lockhart and this arc is right up there for me.  I don't usually play villain side, so not sure how often I will do it, but if I take characters over to get the patrons unlocked I will definitely do this arc, especially if the rewards get bumped a bit.  How about a temp power that lets us summon 5 Vahz like the Graham Easton temp power to summon 5 Tsoo?

 

Thank you!  Awesome job!  I hope to see other missions with Piecemeal in the future!

 

Final Edit:

 

I went and did some exercise and when I came back I realized I never left the mission.  Left the mission and called contact.  There is a duplicate "the" in the final mission dialogue. Bold red below:

 

"But speaking of walking nightmares, Clamor and Dreck being loose is a real hammer to the the spleen that nobody was expecting. Not today, at least! We're going to have to keep our ears to the ground for them, they won't be happy. Pierce is already not too happy, as we lost an entire platoon of the Freaklok in there, but they were all rigged with self-immolation protocol to protect the research. One of Pierce's many good ideas!"

Edited October 26, 2020 by Lockpick
Spelling

[Myrmidon]

6 hours ago, Lockpick said:

 

Nice mission, I liked the various choices the boss offered, dialogue was fine for the most part, but parts of it indicated that I had been a hero that put Dr. V in the Zig and had changed alignment.  Is that dialogue based on my character?  If so, very well done.  If it is standard dialogue, you are going to have conflicts with characters that have not done the TF or were not a hero that switched to Villain.

Graveyard Shift is the prequel, so it assumes you’ve already been through that one.

 

6 hours ago, Lockpick said:

The ambushes while negotiating with Bile are a pain.  I think once you get to this point the ambushes should stop, so you can read the dialogue.

I keep a tab solely for NPC Dialogue and Caption Cutscenes so that I can go back and read it because of that very thing. I highly recommend it.

[Lockpick]

6 hours ago, Myrmidon said:

Graveyard Shift is the prequel, so it assumes you’ve already been through that one.

 

I keep a tab solely for NPC Dialogue and Caption Cutscenes so that I can go back and read it because of that very thing. I highly recommend it.

 

My reading of the dialogue made me think it was the Positron Task Force they were referring to as it kept mentioning the Dam. 

 

Good idea on the tab, but I am talking about the dialogue where you make a choice.  Does that show up?

[Myrmidon]

24 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

 

My reading of the dialogue made me think it was the Positron Task Force they were referring to as it kept mentioning the Dam. 

 

Good idea on the tab, but I am talking about the dialogue where you make a choice.  Does that show up?

My guess is that you’ll have to run through Graveyard Shift to know the answer to that.

[Lockpick]

1 hour ago, Myrmidon said:

My guess is that you’ll have to run through Graveyard Shift to know the answer to that.

I did run through it, but with a different character.  Why would the story language be telling my current character about things he wouldn't know about?

[Myrmidon]

2 hours ago, Lockpick said:

I did run through it, but with a different character.  Why would the story language be telling my current character about things he wouldn't know about?

The impression that I get is that the preferred method is to run them in order while leveling, more of a “getting into character” concept. We will likely just have to hand wave running them out of order, however, I look forward to any answer that we receive to your question.😁

[Faultline]

I am pretty sure that the dialog is triggered by you personally having the badges for Posi TF and the hero arc, it's not shown to everybody who plays it. @Piecemeal

 

[Lines]

Just finished my casual run of it. It went really smoothly. I'll do another this week and try to explore and read more thoroughly.

 

Spoiler

The last mission was great! The freakloks all look fantastic. Floatymanholefreak is my favourite.

 

I heard a glowey sound by the door into max holding, on the prison interior side. Looked around but couldn't find anything. Right by the door was the only place I could hear it.

 

I thought I had the same bug as lockpick with Cortex. I ignored him after a bit and got Bile out (which completed the mission) and then came back to see if I could budge him. It took me a pretty long time to notice why he was stood there. Could you perhaps give him some dialogue when you click on him, even as simple as "Help me open this door!" just so we know where to look?

 

Vahzilok said he recognised me from the dam, but this was a fresh villain.

 

It would be nice if the dialogue window could take a break while Cortex and Vahzilok have their discussion, or if that discussion were moved to the dialogue window, then resume when they're done. It was pretty hard trying to keep track of dialogue in two places - there was a lot of it in that instance and I think I ended up reading it out of order.

 

I don't know if it was meant to happen, but Cortex then seemed to teleport into Vahzilok's cell. It was a bit unclear why that happened. Did my character put them in there?

 

Edited October 26, 2020 by Lines

[Piecemeal]

10 hours ago, Lockpick said:

I did run through it, but with a different character.  Why would the story language be telling my current character about things he wouldn't know about?

There's a disconnect as the red side arc was done first before the blue side was fully concepted.

 

I'm going to go back and look at branching the dialog so that dialog is conditional on having the Posi badges or the Uncivil Warrior badge.

This may not make it into the next patch, that's in the pipe for helping blue out.

 

Subjective:

I can see from feedback that the redside is a bit more direct, and thus being received better. Blue is a technical exercise as I got better with the tools. I will definitely moderate my bag of tricks ;D

[Piecemeal]

Also I am having problems scripting Cortex to announce WTF he's doing. That's on my list. I wanna make his dumb brain point to Dr. V 😄

[Lockpick]

7 hours ago, Faultline said:

I am pretty sure that the dialog is triggered by you personally having the badges for Posi TF and the hero arc, it's not shown to everybody who plays it. @Piecemeal

 

My character did have the Posi TF badges and did have the badges for switching alignment, which were mentioned in the dialogue I saw.  I did not have the badge from the hero arc as I did that on a different character.  I do recall in the mission thinking that I would be very impressed to find out that my choices had impacted the dialogue I saw.  If this is the case it leads to all sorts of possibilities for stories and I have to say that is awesome! 

 

If this is the case, any chance we can get that functionality on AE for content creators?

[Troo]

26 minutes ago, Piecemeal said:

Also I am having problems scripting Cortex to announce WTF he's doing. That's on my list. I wanna make his dumb brain point to Dr. V 😄

Dr V sends Cortex a Valentine. That's totally in cannon.

You're doing awesome!

[RubyRed]

Ok! I just finished this arc this morning. Get ready for wall of text... For reference, again I'm trying this at what feels like an "appropriate level" for the story arc. I created a level 38 EM/Shield Scrapper, kitted with basic IOs, ATOs, and the Atlas Medallion.

 

First, Doc Buzzsaw doesn't show up in "Find Contact" at the appropriate level. Would be nice to have her there. (Now that I think about it, Watkins had the same problem and I think I forgot to mention it in the other thread.) Also, this arc I think should've been called "Oops! All ambushes" ... more on that throughout my feedback ...

 

Give Cortex an Invasive Procedures-- the NPC freaks tended to kill the named guys before I even got to them. I was a bit on auto pilot and didn't notice the barrels healing mobs at first.. very clever 🙂 This one was a bit of a cake walk, so I decided to crank it up to +0x4 just for fun. Boy would I regret that soon!

 

Retrieve Dr. Pierce -- And here I immediately realize the gravity of my mistake! The mob density in this mission is pretty high, lots of double spawns next to each other, all with psionic damage... yikes. Still, I decide to give it a try. I chose my bed, now I have to lie in it!

• The snipers Bouvier's room were an interesting surprise, but they also didn't follow me out of the room. So I just pulled the boss into the hallway and dealt with him while his snipers stood around.
• The building interior map overall was really fun to explore.
• End of mission... lol oodles of ambushes, I think 3 of them came in the front door simultaneously. Good thing I had a lot of purples. I might've had to come back from the hospital once... 🤫
• Once I got outside with Dr. Pierce, the objective for the escort was somewhere way outside the bounds of the map (.67 mi to the West of the building). Luckily just taking her to the mission exit worked.
• Anyways, I learned my lesson and turned the diff back down. 🙂

Buzzsaw's dialog throughout these missions is delightful, btw.

 

Find the lab -- pretty straighforward. Thanks for making the escorts bosses, I was worried I would have to babysit them. I still almost lost Cortex when I entered a big room and he went right and Buzzsaw & Pierce went left. That was a fun mess!
Then Cortex went and got himself stuck in a pillar ... I swear this guy has it out for me. I have no idea what caused this, nobody here had knockback or anything, and it's a big open room and he went and picked the one pillar and stood inside it. Sadly Teleport Target didn't work on him so I had to reset the mission. 😞

The Kraken room is a really cool set piece.. I love everything about this encounter even if it's a bit tough solo. One thing I noticed, the mutant Rikti would spawn right on top of the canisters and sometimes get stuck in them for a few seconds.
The bottom of the hydra pylon was missing geometry, just floating up in the air. It looked fine after I destroyed it.

 

Loot the Unsuspecting Council -- Standard smash n' grab, a nice break after the last two missions (or so I thought). I like that it starts with a warehouse instead of the usual drop into a council base. Then Injured Vandal happened though, ugh Elude... no fun waiting for the idiot to drop his T9. It's really just not fun gameplay waiting three minutes for a mob to be able to be hit again. Also spawning multiple ambushes (that noticeably didn't not respect the team size setting, they were huge) during the fight felt a bit unfair.

Debris from the generators caused them to lift off the ground... amusing, but probably not intended.

 

Steal from Crey -- Ugh, paragon protectors... see my previous rant about T9 defensive powers. At least they were all minions and lieutenants for me, so they died before they could use them.

• It seems like all the mission objectives are in the very last room, making the first couple of floors feel like filler. Maybe spread out the objectives a bit?
• Found out the hard way that Fold Space can pull Hopkins, that was entertaining.
• Omg ambushes. More ambushes. This whole story arc loves the ambushes way too much. Especially since they didn't seem to respect team size -- I was getting groups of 6-8 as solo, while I was trying to deal with Hopkins who's already hard to fight.
• Also so many of them... I think I cleared about ambush 8 before I got tired of it. I finally got fed up with this mission and auto-completed it.

I literally was experiencing fatigue from it and logged off for the night.

 

Invite Bile to the Party -- Okay started this mission this morning after a good sleep.

• Good reuse of this map. I'd love to see some of the unique maps get used a bit more.
• More ambushes 😞 😞 😞 This was especially annoying when I was three pages into TechDeck's dialog and an ambush arrived... though I guess that's my fault for not assuming that would happen at that point.
• Although I admit I do like the Sneaky Swipers, they're fun.

Free Bile from the Zig --

• The PPD Operatives  on the tower might be a little unfair... I could see some characters not having any way of getting to them (I'm pretty sure the building they're standing on has no unassisted way to get to the top), but that's probably a small percent.
• Dillo, Grym, and Twinshot all as bosses in one group on +0x1 seems a bit much... I had to triple-stack insps to have a chance. Still, I'd rather fight them than Vandal.
• "Find the Key to MAX-Holding" for some reason put the objective on Dr. Pierce which was confusing.
• "Unlock Super MAX-Holding" created a duplicate marker at the same spot, and was also confusing for a second... I thought it broke because I had to click the elevator a second time before it went to the next floor.

This objective seems to just point somewhere random.

 

• Does talking to Vandal spawn Agent Indigo as an ambush? I thought the room was clear but then suddenly I was getting my face punched in. Doesn't seem very fair to ambush people while also presenting a long dialog that isn't repeatable. Maybe I just didn't see her, it was kinda dark in the room.
• Bile disappearing into the arms locker confused me ... he just disappeared and I didn't know why, and I missed the captions because I was looking around from him lol. I'll put this one down as me not understanding a new mechanic.
• I like that different sets of enemies respawned for the breakout... kept things fresh. Though the response was kind of anemic... in this case, maybe a couple more spawns on the way back wouldn't hurt?
• "Where is Cortex?" I found Cortex (screenshot below) but he didn't seem to need anything. I swear this guy hates me! There were also two markers for this objective and I wasn't sure what the second one was wanting.

 

Lastly, Bile needs some eyeglasses... I wasn't even using stealth on this character and it seemed really easy for him to lose sight of me even though I was only 20 ft away from him.

 

"It's like a TED talk from hell!" - snrk. 🙂

 

Overall:

• Despite it's difficulty, I mostly had fun with this one. It was a good story with great characters and some genuinely fun objectives that felt fresh.
• Unlike the new blueside arc, I didn't feel the dialog overstayed its welcome. Just the right amount of text for a story arc I think.
• That said... ambuuuuushes. Oh my gosh this arc rivals some of the worst FW/NW arcs for being in love with ambushes. I'm not opposed to ambushes as a way to spice things up and make things a bit more precarious, but when they're in almost every mission, relentless without pause, spawning in the middle of already super difficult fights, it ceases being fun.

Honestly, this is a good arc for a full team based on the difficulty (or maybe one exemplar'd incarnate 😛 ). I wouldn't recommend it for solo/small teams, especially if you don't have anybody to soak up the massive damage from AVs or control large ambushes. With that in mind, I actually think this whole thing, with its linear nature and tough gameplay might actually be better suited as a Strike Force than a story arc, if for no other reason than to emphasize that you should really team your way through this one.

 

[Moonscribe]

A few thoughts on my experience with this arc:

 

Firstly, I second a lot of other sentiments in these comments, such as: Doc Buzzsaw's dialogue is the best (and feels very true to her character, though maybe those are redundant); there are probably too many ambushes; overall good arc, good story, interesting mission maps, a bit on the difficult side. Other things:

 

Crey is interested in moving to Kallisti Wharf? Ooooh, foreshadowing?!

 

I definitely don't want this to be a strike force, for purely selfish reasons - if it's made a SF I'll be unable to solo it with all the AVs and so will probably never do it when it goes live. I'd much rather it be a fakey-fake TF/SF like the Ouroboros arcs, most things in First/Night Ward, etc.

 

How exactly did we get to the Abandoned Sewers? Didn't seem to say (or I missed it), though I guess through Boomtown is the most obvious route. Also... will we get to have Freakloks roving around the Abandoned Sewers if that's where things are going down? (I almost want it to become a co-op zone though I'm not sure whether that would work out story-wise...)

 

Speaking of which, I was disappointed we didn't get to see a lot of the Freaklok given how much they've been teased... I know more is coming, but can we have a Freaklok boss or something to come along with us on the final mission, so as to get more of a taste? I assume in the future something will go horribly wrong and/or right and we'll be up to our Detail 1s in hostile Freakloks, but I'm impatient I guess!

[EmperorSteele]

Mission 1: When speaking to Cortex, he mentions that you fought his "cohort". I feel like this should be plural, as I assume he's talking about the other baddies you fought on the way to him.

Mission 2: I really wish the Police cars were destructible!

Mission 4.2: Only 10 "immature" Protectors? I gotta do this 10 times to get a badge? ugh....

Mission 4.3:  The "Sneaky" Freaks were fun (liked the callback to them having Skyraider tech!) but the Tanks didn't look sneaky at all. Or is that the joke? Buuut... If you want me to talk to a dude, don't THROW INFINITE AMBUSHES AT ME WHILE I'M TALKING TO HIM! It's my own fault for raising my diff and forgetting to turn it back down, but SHEESH! Make one ambush at half health, then that's it. Not like, 3-5 on defeat, that's just dumb!

Mission 5: The defeat clue for the Shining Stars says: "You HEAD them say Clamor was the priority". I'm 97.8% sure that's supposed to say "heard". Also, I appreciate the Counter-Strike meme =P The "Return to drop zone" pip appears at the sewer door when you exit. Luckily, I knew where to go, but that might be a bit confusing.

Overall: I REALLY enjoyed this arc, but it took THREE HOURS! Granted, I was looking for stuff and writing this post as I went along, also upped my diff for shizzles and giggles, but even so, Yikes! Feels like it needs to be worth more than 20 reward merits

[Lines]

5 hours ago, EmperorSteele said:

Mission 4.2: Only 10 "immature" Protectors? I gotta do this 10 times to get a badge? ugh....

Interestingly, I hit 35 in one run, lowest difficulty.

[Piecemeal]

The ambushes for the immature protectors got bumped for next patch. Given more dialog to make you question them.

 

And yes, ambushes everywhere else were scaled back.

[EmperorSteele]

So, some post-play afterthoughts:

 

The end of this arc feels like it's just the begining of something bigger. I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I love it, and it makes me eager for more! On the other hand, I had an initial feeling of "wait, that's it? I just spent 3 hours making a super Freakalokst army, and dont even get to use it?"

 

I had an idea, that maybe the mission can reward a temp power that summons a Freakalok ally or two? That way we can have some fun with them while waiting for the next chapter!

 

Loved seeing all the baddies I had put away during my hero career! Though there was one I didn't recognize, and now can't even remember the name of. I'm gonna hafta look into that on my next playthrough. Really neat detail all around, though!

 

I also wanted to reiterate that I loved the writing, especially the humor! Looking back, though, it seems like MOST of the characters were either cracking jokes, or were a self-parody, or were just plain not meant to be taken seriously. Which is fine, but humor works best in moderation, or in contrast to more serious things. Just think about pretty much any sitcom or buddy movie: Usually, one character is the "funny" one, the other is the straight man (or woman or whatever), and the humor comes not from the funny one's jokes, but the contrast and reactions with their "normal" counterpart. I don't think you need to re-write anything here (Cortex and Dr. V. were well done as the comedic foils), but going forward, maybe keep this in mind. 

 

Either way, I loved the ridiculous pettiness of validating someone else's parking ticket! Heck, I pretty much loved the entire arc! Looking forward to the fixes, and more Piecemeal-style debauchery in the future!

[Jimmy]

Build 2 - October 31st, 2020

 

New Story Arc: The Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok (Villain, Level 30-39)

A notorious and well-admired sociopath of the Rogue Isles has put out a straight-forward distress call through the Broker network, asking individuals of highly dubious moral constitution to save her neck in the name of Science. Doc Buzzsaw is being stalked by a notable ne'er-do-well and the price on her head is significantly less than the value of preserving it. Villains of level 30 and beyond should seek her out in Sharkhead Isle, in the usual place, and relief will wash over you after the discovery that her attachment to bank accounts has disappeared in the face of her mortality, as an added bonus.

• Contact: Doc Buzzsaw, Sharkhead Isle
  • Listed in Ouroboros under Captain (Level 35-39) > The Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok (27.02)
• Chronologically this arc takes place after the Hero arc above
• This arc features new maps, new environments, two new enemy factions, a prison break, new badges, several intricate missions with new spawn behaviours and a very, very cryptic poem

Changes in this build:

• Doc Buzzsaw added to Find Contact window
• Mission 4_1 (Council)
  • Vandal's Overload reduced to 30%def/45s
• Mission 4_3 (Freakshow)
  • Ambushes reduced
• Mission 5 (Finale)
  • Changed the trigger radius of Manticore's fight to more reliably trigger (If you've got the credentials to spawn him)
  • Added a missing souvenir that would prevent a player from satisfying the credentials for spawning Manticore
    • "I get a Gold Medal in being an distracted dev!" - @Piecemeal
  • Removed sound effect on MAX door that sounds like a glowie (But isn't)
  • Added branching dialog to Dr. Vahz based on badges owned:
    • Uncivil Warrior
    • Dam Hero
    • Plague Stopper
  • Cortex may or may not have a waypoint to him now, please look in the jail cell he's facing to find Dr. V!

 

[csr]

On 10/31/2020 at 7:11 AM, Jimmy said:

• Contact: Doc Buzzsaw, Sharkhead Isle
  • Listed in Ouroboros under Captain (Level 35-39) > The Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok (27.02)

 

On my Rogue the level 35-39 Range is called "Criminal" rather than "Captain".

 

After accepting her first mission Doc Buzzsaw says "No, my young friends are better served as a distraction, but they won't know that."  This means it would be in the interest of her "young friends" to serve as a distraction.  Which I doubt is the intent.  Perhaps "No, my young friends would better serve [...]" would be a better phrasing.

 

The second paragraph here starts "He and his cadre [...]", but the only direct reference to Cortex is in the mission title, it might be better to avoid using a pronoun and refer to him directly here. "Cortex and his cadre [...]" also has a better sound to it to my ear.

Edited November 3, 2020 by csr

[csr]

After the 1st mission from Buzzsaw she says (in the last sentence of the first paragraph)...

 

  "'ll see what what I can find out. Feel free to wander about while I conduct my research!"