Focused Feedback: Co-Op Striga Isle & New Story Arcs

[Lazarillo]

3 minutes ago, Monos King said:

First time hearing of Mteru. Was that a dark astoria lore thing?

He (it?) is one of the original BP deities and gets name dropped occasionally in BP banter in their original level range.  Not related to DA.

[Monos King]

7 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

He (it?) is one of the original BP deities and gets name dropped occasionally in BP banter in their original level range.  Not related to DA.

Oh nice, guess it's been a while.

[strix_]

Running this zone for the first time on the open beta! Just wrapped up the Straxt story arc, and working my way through Orpheus's contact now. Lots to love, lots worth critiquing. I'm going to try to keep gameplay feedback brief, because I'm aware that I was playing co-op missions solo so my experience might not be representative of other players' or the intended experience:

- Missions felt decently paced, but bosses go down a little easy.
- I felt decently able to solo everything on an appropriately-levelled Arachnos Widow with crafted enhancements (wanted to test out the new VEAT changes!). Died a couple times in more hectic fights.
- Bomb locations in both the cargo ship and the warehouse were really obscure and out of the way in places, which got a little frustrating, but that could just be poor RNG on the spawn locations.

 

While I love the content itself, I have some feedback on the grammar and word choice in the NPC dialogue I've read so far that really make me think that a few bits of dialogue could use another polish/editing pass before release to make things clearer for the players. However, I'm also conscious of the fact that, as the build is currently at Release Candidate 2, it's probably too late for substantial overhauls of the dialogue before the final release of Page 7. As such, I've included a "tl;dr" at the bottom of the post that just consists of purely of grammar and formatting errors I've noticed during my playthrough, rather than my more in-depth thoughts about the quality of the writing so far (very good) and ways I think the presentation could be improved (extra clarity on a few lines of dialogue).

Here we go:

Spoiler

To address the elephant in the room first: Straxt is a 5th Column NPC. They are a faction in the game world, Striga Isle is their former base, the Council are their most hated enemies, and getting this faction's perspective on those events (even if they are a morally reprehensible group) offers a ton of interesting potential avenues with which to shine more light the lore and the game world. To not explore the lore of the 5th Column in this overhaul of Striga Isle would be weirder and more incongruous, I think, than including a 5th Column NPC who's trying to either exploit the weakness of the Council in the region or to recover the 5th Column's secrets before they fall into the Council's hands (or worse, some street gangs!). Straxt is both, and that's a really good setup for a story arc!

 

To be clear: if I were writing this Striga Isle revamp, I would probably not have explored the 5th Column's history with the Council and the Isle from the perspective of the player character working for a 5th Column Colonel. However, I am not writing this content, and offering that kind of overarching "Well, I just wouldn't have written this storyline?" advice is ultimately unhelpful as constructive feedback. One of the key principles of constructive feedback is to try and give advice that can draw out the best possible version of what the writers are trying to present, not to try and force the story into the confines of what I think it should've been. I also don't want the fact that I've gone really in-depth on a few examples of dialogue in this Story Arc to come off as mean-spirited towards any members of the development team: it's actually entirely the opposite, I think the work on this area is brilliant. It's obvious that a lot of love and attention has gone into revamping Striga Isle for the new Story Arcs, and I do want to highlight that the content here is really good (especially if this was an area given to a newer member of the dev team, as mentioned before in the thread! You did a great job!), I just think another edit of the presentation of these ideas could go a long way towards making it shine even brighter, and a bit more consistent with the rest of the game (since the goal, per earlier posts, was to mirror the legacy arcs). These are just a few case studies of things that I really enjoyed, and things that I think could be improved before release of this zone.

With that preamble out of the way, let's examine our introduction to Oberst Straxt:

The actual information conveyed here is awesome from a lore perspective, but the presentation could use a bit of refinement. The capitalisation of "the Council" and "The Council" is inconsistent from sentence to sentence ("the Council" would be grammatically correct in the contexts its written in, similar to how later dialogue uses "the Family"), and the exposition is delivered with a few too many words for a character who reads in other dialogue like they're supposed to come across as brusque, operating incognito, and to-the-point. I'd advise dropping "Maybe you're..." and "If you can..." to make the writing clearer and more direct. It can add a ton of flavour for Straxt to come across as assertive in his briefings: he's an authority figure giving an objective, just stating it directly saying "Do this." can be a great way of giving a character an air of authority, as you can see with a lot of the Arachnos NPCs in the base game. Additionally, phrases like "strong united front" are redundant; just saying "united front" conveys the image the Council wishes to present. Fewer words for a stronger statement!

 

Following these principles, I've tried my hand at rephrasing the briefing:

Quote

"Wondering what an Oberst is doing on Striga Isle? Before the Council made Striga their stronghold, it belonged to us. Look around you: the Council may present a united front to outsiders, but their hold over this island weakens by the day. Striga will soon be ours once more!

We still have troves of equipment and data buried all over the island, and the 5th Column has use for assets willing to prevent them from falling into the hands of our enemies. Set aside our differences for a moment, and think of the profit."

 

This conveys the same information as the dialogue in the screenshot, but more directly. Keeping the history confined to the first paragraph and the objective itself in the second paragraph makes it easier for a player to parse the history (Striga Isle belonged to the 5th Column, now the Council holds it, and the Column want to exploit the instability on the island to regain their foothold) and their objectives (Recover data and equipment all over the island for profit) at a glance, which is needed in a co-op zone where the information relevant to gameplay needs to be parsed by players as quickly as possible. (I could talk for hours about how radio missions in base CoH bungle communicating relevant information to players at a glance.)

This is good! It's very in-keeping with other NPC descriptions in the base game. In keeping with some of the phrasing suggestions for clarity, I would suggest changing the phrasing of "free agents," which is a little clunky, to a word like "mercenaries" or "assets." "To not draw" could also be replaced with a different phrase like "to avoid attention on himself and his cell" to similarly reduce clunkiness.

 

There's some uncertainty about who his cell of operatives are from this story arc, at least to me: is he secretly working with members of the local gangs to undermine the Council, or is he operating a cell of unseen 5th Column infiltrators around the island? Either feels like it could be in-character for Straxt, but a hint one way or the other would add that little bit more story context to the mobs around the island.

This is such a good redside mission concept: Straxt is sending you, a deniable and expendable asset, into the area as a distraction to draw attention away from the 5th Column's actual operations on the island. There's similar formatting issues here, though: inconsistent capitalisation of the Council. "Despite all that has happened" could use a comma after it, and "I order you to..." has the same issues that I raised earlier about clearness and directness. Leaving the order implicit can strengthen the idea this is a business relationship, making it more palatable for players who don't want their character to be a lackey for the 5th Column to justify taking these missions. Calling the Council and other faction "gangs" also seems a bit out of character for a military guy like Straxt, especially when he calls the Sky Raiders "lesser-developed factions" later on, which feels more in-keeping. If the goal isn't to repeat phrasing, "the local underworld" or "the criminal elements" could fit better, but that's a subjective thing.

Again, following the principles I previously outlined, I've rephrased it as:

Quote

Despite all that has happened, the Council still maintains their foothold in Port Noble. Their patrols are causing issues for our infiltrators, and stirring conflict with the local underworld.

The Council must be dealt with. Cull their numbers, and my operatives will be able to carry out their own work on the Isle.

 

History and context on the first paragraph, objective on the second paragraph.

 

In-mission text for the mission is perfect. Clear, succinct, and conveys the purpose of the mission immediately. The player direction inside and outside these Story Arc missions is superb.

 

LOVE that he gives you his encrypted communicator codes. Fits with the spy fiction theme of this contact, and gives context to the player being unable to initially call him. Excellent work. Could be rephrased to "Without the Council breathing down our necks, we can finally get some real work done." but that's a nitpick. This is great.
 

Onto Buried Secrets:

This has already been critiqued in other posts, and I agree that it's a bit too wordy. Following the outlined principles earlier, I rephrased this to:
 

Quote

 

Our highest priority on Striga Isle is to recover our stolen caches. That's where you come in. These 'Warriors' have been sticking their noses where they don't belong, and some of our equipment has already made its way into the hands of the Family and the Sky Raiders. Bring our property back, and punish those responsible.

 

A ship named the 'Pelican' is about to depart for Europe, meant to reconvene with a local branch of the Family. One of our caches is in the cargo hold. Recover the crate, and ensure the ship never reaches its destination.

 

Anyway, from here there's a ton of dialogue I just loved. Inside the ship:

This is great NPC dialogue. I could imagine the henchmen in Arkham City saying this right before Batman swoops down. Honestly, the incidental NPC dialogue around the whole area is just great. It really adds a ton of charm to the zone:

So good. Tells us exactly who these guys are, what they're doing, who they're fighting, and how they feel about it. Great impression of a broader conflict on the island. From this point in the Story Arc, though, I've also noticed that the formatting of NPC briefings for Straxt improve significantly.

These are great! Clear objective, concise presentation.

It's also awesome to get references to the radio station from the Words of the Warrior badge, too. There's a really deep admiration for the lore of Striga Isle that runs through all the content here.

Others have brought it up, but Treasure Seeker Jones is an really good joke, and very in-keeping with CoH's style of humour.

 

Overall, the content here is excellent so far outside of a few easily-fixed formatting issues that really only seem to apply to the first few bits of dialogue for Straxt and are largely gone for the rest of the content I've experienced so far. Player dialogue is great the whole way through, being able to force Dr. Francois into developing weapons for you after rescuing him is the kind of moustache-twirling villainy that we don't see enough of redside. And Orpheus is already one of my absolute favourite incidental NPCs in this game from my brief interactions with him! There's so much to like about this story content.

And the "tl;dr" of quick fixes to grammar and formatting:

Spoiler

- 'The Council' is improperly capitalised in Oberst Straxt's initial dialogue, it should be 'the Council.'
- "strong united front" in Oberst Straxt's first briefing is grammatically incorrect, should just be "united front"
- In the briefing for "Reduce Council numbers in Port Noble", there should be a comma after "Despite all that has happened"
- In the briefing for "Reduce Council numbers in Port Noble", 'The Council' is improperly capitalised, it should be 'the Council.'
- In the selection screen for 'Eradicate Sky Raider research,' "of course" should have a comma before and after for grammar reasons.
- In the ending for 'Eradicate Sky Raider research', the "lesser developed" in "lesser developed factions" should be hyphenated as "lesser-developed"
- In Orpheus's introduction, "honest to Apollo" should be hyphenated as "honest-to-Apollo"
- In Orpheus's introduction to 'Distract the Banished Pantheon', there should be a comma after "While you are drawing their attention"

 

Anyway, this zone rocks. Sorry for the long post!

 

 

Edited February 16 by strix_

[Grandfeatherex]

I intentionally avoided reading a lot of the body of the posts since I haven't run the arc yet, but if we're forced to get a zone change, can we at least get a generic store/quartermaster that sells enhancements in the area?

I'm not a fan of changing things in general, but the last time i went there i planed ahead and bought SO's for the slots i would unlock... to have them go red before I could slot them, meaning i had to buy them off the /ah