Shining Stars

[Techwright]

4 hours ago, High_Beam said:

Yeah I kind of hate most of the shining stars, especially Twinshot (Kiddo).  Flambeaux makes me laugh straight up, but she was often one of the surviving heroes over and over again when I was doing Wedding runs.  But back to my hate of Twinshot, the worst pathing AI, the worst non-helping helper ever.

 

Ugh.  Plus that I effed the neighbors cat grin of hers.  I wanna punch he rin the face . . . with a forklift.

 

I've only run the Atlas Park missions, and then only once or twice, and that over 5 years ago.  It is the Stars running willy-nilly all around the player character that sold me on how broken the arc was.  Flambeaux I remember immediately lumping into the same camp as Fusionette, but with more self-centered attitude.

 

4 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

 

I don't object to streamlining, but the content just isn't terribly good

 

2 hours ago, Parabola said:

It never fails to make me laugh that the first arc, unlocked at level 5, has a 'this is what a trainer is' mission.

 

If the current dev team were not volunteers and strapped for time, I'd petition for a remake of the Shining Stars arc to fix a lot of what ails it.  Maybe start it at level one to deal with the "this is what a trainer is" issue.  I gather from other comments that the characters never really advance in nature in KR and SC.  That is unfortunate.  In addition to being considered higher in the security ranks, it would have made sense for them to grow in personalities as well.  Twinshot, for example, would lose some or all of that devil-may-care sass, and start functioning more like a leader.  Grym and Dillo would grow a bit more in their social and linguistical understandings, without entirely losing their personalities.  Proton would gain a bit in the social department as well, and Flambeau might have started to show a bit less self-centered nature.

[Scarlet Shocker]

17 minutes ago, Techwright said:

If the current dev team were not volunteers and strapped for time, I'd petition for a remake of the Shining Stars arc to fix a lot of what ails it.  Maybe start it at level one to deal with the "this is what a trainer is" issue.  I gather from other comments that the characters never really advance in nature in KR and SC.  That is unfortunate.  In addition to being considered higher in the security ranks, it would have made sense for them to grow in personalities as well.  Twinshot, for example, would lose some or all of that devil-may-care sass, and start functioning more like a leader.  Grym and Dillo would grow a bit more in their social and linguistical understandings, without entirely losing their personalities.  Proton would gain a bit in the social department as well, and Flambeau might have started to show a bit less self-centered nature.

 

You are better versed in these arcs than me but I think you've captured a lot of the main issues with them

 

I think we should change their names from Shining Stars to Shooting Stars and put them out of our misery

 

[MTeague]

Honestly, Flambeaux being entirely self-centered fits her to a T.

 

It's also part of what makes it satisfying to beat her down in some of the Going Rogue Tip Missions, later on.  When she's trying to be full Villain, and completely utterly failing at that too, because she's not a Villain, she's an over-arrogant Diva / Attention Hoor(b).  Redside mission tip, Filmed Announcement in particular, but there are definitely others.

Edited Thursday at 04:39 PM by MTeague

[UltraAlt]

20 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

I don't object to streamlining, but the content just isn't terribly good

 

I have to say I hate the Twinshot arc with a passion.

Habersham - or whatever - I'm not very fond of either.

 

The only thing I can say that I can remember about them is that there weren't any hunts in either of them that I recall, but the lack of enjoyment may have warped my memory of the two of them.

 

I think I have been forced into running Twinshot arc maybe twice since I have been back due to teammates twisting my arm.

Habersham maybe once.

So easy to avoid these with a DFB or 2.

 

Origin arcs. Yeah. I've been running them on and off. A lot of content in those that gets easily missed during hero-side leveling and some good battles with AVs mixed in there.

I've been doing more experimenting with them, and you can go to your origin contact in Altas - they will blow you off, but they will send you to another contact on the archetype chain - if you outlevel that one the same thing happens ...  I don't know how long this goes on, but it worked with a level 20 that had not spoken to any of the origin contacts yet to get the level 20 contact related to their origin.

[SuperJames]

I don't think the Twinshot arcs are written well. I like the concept but the execution is poor. The plot is silly and the ending is downright depressing.

 

Having said that, Techwright's comments me think. Instead of a rework, I would be happier seeing the characters reappear as contacts for new higher-level content. It would be great to see some character development and a sense of progression in the game world as they guide you through storylines that are less focused on the NPCs themselves.

 

I've just played the first of Darmian's AE arcs featuring the Meteors, which I thought was very good and just what the Shining Stars need. Has anyone done an AE arc along these lines already?

[Skyhawke]

I would just like to thank @MTeague for adding "attention hoorb" to my vocabulary. 😁

[Octogoat]

On the flip side I really like dr.graves' arcs

[ZamuelNow]

Don't know if anyone has tried to do an AE version of these.  They would be improved by losing the tutorial aspects but AE can't do any cinematics or special spawn placement.  A shame since both feel like they have promise that they don't live up to.

 

Both Twinshot and Dr. Graves' arcs make assumptions of the player character and have characters that can rub you the wrong way.  Like, I don't hate Twinshot like so many others here seem to do with her "kiddo" directed to the player character makes me wonder both how old Twinshot is supposed to be and how young did the devs think our characters were.  While there's supposed to be a time progression from 1-50, teen heroes are the exception instead of the norm. Honestly, I think perception of Twinshot could shift just by changing kiddo for almost anything else.  In playing these two arcs recently, I found that while I found Twinshot slightly more annoying and I've never liked Dillo, I wound up liking Grym.  And Flamebeaux has always been entertaining.

 

Dr. Graves' arc has problems with treating villains as brutish and dumb.  And I believe I remember the first version was even worse about that.  I did find myself liking Omnicore due to the reveal of her connection to Boris the Russian.  Not being as stoic as she claims reframes her interactions with the player.  Especially since you can bump into her in a later villain arc.

[gameboy1234]

On 5/15/2025 at 6:33 AM, Parabola said:

It never fails to make me laugh that the first arc, unlocked at level 5, has a 'this is what a trainer is' mission.

 

I assume that the devs thought some players might use DFB to level up, and not visited a trainer in the over-world.  So they tossed that in just to be safe.  That same mission also tells you how to use the Tram, and sends you to a second trainer, Blue Steel, in Kings Row.  Also not a bad idea.

 

My personal issues with those arcs is solely how buggy they are.  The really really odd pathing AI, some other stuff that just seems to not work consistently, they just took one of the first "real" arcs that a new player might experience and handed it to the intern or something.  The lack of quality control just boggles me, I don't get it.  Anyway, lots of other folks have commented on it, it'd be nice to get some of this fixed but probably not a priority for the devs by a long shot.

 

 

[gameboy1234]

7 hours ago, Octogoat said:

On the flip side I really like dr.graves' arcs

 

I ran it recently and yes, I liked it as well.  Except for some of the technical issues and pathing, the writing is much better and the plot hangs together a little more.  The only thing that really bugs me is meeting Scirocco for the first time, it really feels off.  Part of this is tech limitations I think, but Scirocco should make more of an entrance, he just sort of jogs up to you and says "hi!".

 

I like the idea of killing your rivals, but I think they show up later for various reasons, and the devs didn't want to deal with "but I killed this dude" problems.

 

[GM Crumpet]

The whole thing (and Dr Graves which is identical but with a different skin on it) are to introduce players to the basic concepts of the game. The first arc is really easy and the second arc introduces slightly more difficult concepts. I rather like the third arc in both as they both give good resolutions with a moderately hard boss fight.