[Heroic][1-14] Cracking Skulls

[ceaars]

The current arc ID is #186.

 

This arc was one of my first experiments with building a nice low-level arc that "spiced" up the story and the stock villain group with custom mobs.  I was always rather proud of it, but it never really did that well on live.

 

I've made a few changes based on feedback from six years ago: the final boss has been downgraded from Elite Boss to normal Boss (so he can be downgraded to a lt. if you so choose, like the other bosses) - I suspect some of the dissatisfaction was he was just too strong even if weakened from Elite Boss to Boss.  So that should be fixed.

 

One other criticism (I think it was Gladius or Glazius - I can't remember his handle) was that it didn't quite decide whether it wanted to be "dark" or "light hearted."  Pretty much the whole arc is pretty dark; the only light hearted element in the whole thing was the boss in the second mission, so that was pretty easy to fix.  His name, description and 'combat text' is not even slightly funny now.  If anybody who plays this arc notices any humor elements left here that I didn't catch, let me know so I can edit them out.  Needless to say, the arc is pretty grim now.

 

The only other problem I see with it is it is much more 'recent':  this arc was written long before the skulls got their I24 revamp, and some of the details of that revamp make some of the fiction in the arc a bit obsolete.  So it's technically kind of a 'legacy' arc in that regard.

 

So let me know what you think!

 

Note: This was actually my lowest rated arc originally on live.  I had another one that got Dev's Choice, and the Lazarus Project and Learning the Ropes were always much more popular (and better rated) then this one.  As a result of that, once I've got those three arcs ready again to be published, I'll probably pull Cracking Skulls, but I figured I'd advertise this one - especially since MCM is currently playing through (low level) arcs and might like this one while it's still there to play!

[GamerKate]

I will most certainly play it :)

 

MCM

[Police Woman]

I played through this on an 18 scrapper (Princess Purple had leveled up a bit since the last AE mission).  The story seemed fine, a pretty standard story about breaking up a drug ring.  I did run into a game mechanics problem where the final boss of the story arc was spawning as a regular mob throughout missions 2 and 3.  There was some unintentional humor when instances of the boss would speak minion dialog about how they were afraid of the big boss.  As an 18 scrapper on a 1-14 story arc, I was able to handle the multi-spawns of the end boss, but I think this would've been a problem for a level 2.

 

Princess Purple - Cracking Skulls!

 

 

[ceaars]

I played through this on an 18 scrapper (Princess Purple had leveled up a bit since the last AE mission).  The story seemed fine, a pretty standard story about breaking up a drug ring.  I did run into a game mechanics problem where the final boss of the story arc was spawning as a regular mob throughout missions 2 and 3.  There was some unintentional humor when instances of the boss would speak minion dialog about how they were afraid of the big boss.  As an 18 scrapper on a 1-14 story arc, I was able to handle the multi-spawns of the end boss, but I think this would've been a problem for a level 2.

 

I gotta say, PW, if you actually ended up having to fight him as a real set of three bosses (at full boss level) several times, you are a saint for giving the arc the rating you did!

 

Obviously, that particular issue is fixed.  Although it may be obvious to most everyone here already, I'll post what I discovered so anyone who doesn't know won't make this mistake:

 

The issue was caused by a "custom" group (Skulls) existing that had only the end boss and a single minion type in it in the actual story file versus a "master" custom group (that existed outside the story file) also called the Skulls that had all of the original Skulls mobs as part of the group, *plus* the special minion, lt., and boss.  "Regular" Skulls were used for the first mission (i.e. the default villain group), but the modified Skulls were used in missions 2 and 3 (and also as the "source" of certain bosses in placed boss battles).

 

It gets weirder.  Apparently the "full" custom Skulls group (with standard and custom mobs) was somehow "included" in my story file, but when I transferred files over I *only* transferred the story file - not the custom group and custom critter files.  So when I first tested, then published and played everything seemed to work fine.

 

However, I'd respond to poor ratings by going in and try to "fix" things I thought were annoying people playing the arc.  What I didn't know was that every time I did this it had a tendency to "remove" assets from the story file that were not used directly and also had no matching asset in the custom group file (which, again, didn't exist - so that second part was always true).

 

So in a nutshell when I first tried to tweak things I "tweaked" the end boss and the seers (inadvertently ensuring they remained in the story file), while wiping out the custom bosses and lts.  I'm not even going to pretend to understand why my custom group was still spawning normal skulls... but I know it was because the end boss worked fine, but for the life of me the mission two and three groups would always be normal skulls - never the custom ones designed to add flavor to the story.

 

Also - both the Gravedigger Seers and the end boss were only worth 75% XP (they were "standard" in terms of their powers).  I wanted them worth 100% not 75% (based on the idea maybe *that* had irritated a player into giving it 3 stars).  I was able to bring up the end boss and pull that off, but there was no sign of the Seers for me to even modify the powers of!  (Without knowing it I'd somehow 'removed' them from the story file.)

 

That left a custom villain group with ONLY the end boss remaining in it (the "normal" skulls had also vanished from the "in-story" custom group when I tried to adjust what the end boss had).  And me clueless that that was what I'd done: the very last time I tested it, I'd done the tweak to the end boss - played through and verified everything was working as planned.  Then edited again intending to "tweak" the Seers ... and then just "saved it off without changes" when I failed to find them anywhere in the story file.  Since I hadn't changed anything (as of the last time I'd tried to test play it) - or at least thought I hadn't - I figured everything would still be as I'd left it.

 

Nope.

 

And along comes PW to find a custom group spawning end bosses only.

 

Like I said.  She's a saint for being even remotely nice about that.

 

Anyway, don't make the mistake I did.  Also bring over ALL of your costume, custom mob, and custom group sets (which, by the way, if you don't remember, are separate from the actual story files) too!  Once I did that, things started working again.  The custom version of the skulls went back to spawning normally* and the end boss only showed up at the end.

 

*Sort of.  Turns out it was only spawning normal skulls; it would spawn a 'custom skull' in a random only 1% of the time - well seemed like that.  Suspecting the system might be getting confused about my having a custom faction with a name identical to a default faction, I changed the name of the custom faction to "The Skulls" and bam ... the customs now spawn alongside their 'normal' counterparts.

 

I also tweaked a few things that were bothering me (I never liked how the 'combat arrests' in the first mission used the same custom mob with three different names, so I went ahead and made him three separate mobs - once for each 'boss-fight-that-actually-uses-a-minion-instead-of-a-boss-as-the-boss' trick).  And a few more flavor encounters to the second mission.

 

Tested it.  A lot.  Everything was working as intended (except I forgot about 'Terry' in mission two - I need to go back and fix that).

 

So *hopefully* the next person to play it will get it in working order, instead of what PW saw...

 

And, again, much thanks to PW: if you hadn't actually sent me feedback I would have never known the arc had been broken and it probably would have kept getting low ratings without me understanding what was upsetting people about it.  So - for the third time: thank you!