2 Responses

1. Spunky Taco Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   I love this ARc . It not for the Faint of heart. Make sure you have a good team and awesome comunication

   Posted on September 9th, 2009 at 8:55 pm

2. Glazius Says:

   Storyline
   Design
   Gameplay
   Detail

   @GlaziusF

   Running this on a high-test max-level spine/regen scrapper, +1/x2 with bosses on.

   —

   Ah, high adventure in space.

   …hmm. Generally if there’s a time limit it’s good to have it called out or highlighted in the opening text. Even if you’re at the text limit, you can still highlight text and give it some preset colors with the right-click menu.

   Hmm. Clawfighter lieutenants and ranged-exclusive archer minions. No descriptions on either.

   Axe bosses with buildup. Still no descriptions. …no description on my ally either.

   —

   Apparently there’s a flaw in our portal technology that these lizardmen can come through. Alright. At least this one’s not on a stealth timer.

   Something in last mission and this one - there are like dozens of patrols all saying the same thing. That’s really just annoying in the long run, and not necessary as NPC dialogue has a big broadcast radius these days. You need one talking patrol per unique line, and some number of silent ones.

   Wow, these upload timers are long. No real reason for that, it’s not like we’re on a timer or there are patrols wandering around.

   The various clues seem to be hinting that Thanagar is about to destroy the world to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

   —

   Hyperspace bypass, weapon of mass destruction, same thing.

   Ah. These archers have Rain of Arrows. As minions.

   Also a katana lieut with Build Up.

   Apparently my supposed warden was not aware of the plan to destroy Earth, and is instead planning to…

   Well, shutting down the drive failed, so she’s going to…

   Pilot the ship into Portal Corps? …I guess since there’s no other way to shut down the energy cascade. Well, let’s see about that.

   —

   Apparently now my briefings are wiretapping communication? Might want to kick in some static or put it in italics or something.

   And this is another timed mission that should be highlighted.

   The scientist starts rooting as he freaks out about the starship crash. I think you may want to look into a different animation.

   ..hmm. These scientists I’m rescuing act run off and then act like they’re expecting to be led around, but I don’t have any objectives to that effect.

   I also see some… axe/shield bosses, I think? No buildup on them, though.

   The boss here is a DB/Inv archvillain. No unstoppable, which is a small mercy. I’ve got enough lucks stocked up that I can just nosell him long enough to chew through his hit points.

   And now that Portal Corp is evacuated…

   Down comes the hammer.

   —

   Apparently I’m fighting my contact in… a cavern under Portal Corp? Because there totally is one?

   I appreciate wanting to put something nice in the navbar to go with the countdown timer, and honestly I can’t think of something off the top of my head, but this is an actual tiny aboveground bit of Portal Corp that’s somehow still standing, right?

   He’s a broadsworder with buildup who summons “death sentinels” that drop tar patches and I think Petrifying Gaze on me Either that or Fearsome Stare, can’t really tell from the SFX alone. Three waves. Then he’s down. Improvement on the SSer with Rage I was expecting from the first mission, anyway!

   —

   Storyline - **. A warrior race of birdpeople from space are looking to strike a fatal blow against their old adversaries, a race of slaver lizardpeople. There’s just one problem - Earth won’t survive the attack.

   So did I just describe this arc, or the second-season finale of the Justice League cartoon?

   Don’t read too much into this. If they purged everything from CoH that had ever been done with superheroes there wouldn’t be a lot left. But one of the things that made that finale work is that Hawkgirl had spent two seasons working with the Justice League so we had a stake in her character, kind of a hook and a contrast to the warrior birdpeople. Here it’s just one batch of space jerks butting heads with another bunch of space jerks, with no investment at all on my part. There’s really no reason to trust him, and no real attachment to the Hawkgirl analogue who acts as my jailer and decides to sacrifice herself.

   Design - **. Surprise timed missions are almost as bad as surprise mission failures. It helps to have an idea before you click accept that you’ll be subject to a timer, so you can make plans to do things like go out and get a Shivan Shard or whatever before you press the button. And it doesn’t seem like any of these timers should actually exist in that they’ll still present a reasonable course of action if they run out, other than the one on the final mission which is your countdown to give your traitor contact a more violent sendoff.

   The enemy designs are visually evocative, but until they pulled out their weapons I couldn’t tell the diffference between the various ranks — if there were differences in costuming they were subsumed under the theme. Telling the difference out of combat isn’t quite as crucial as telling the difference within combat, but it does help to have a quick way to distinguish between a single group of three minions and a lieutenant and two groups of one boss and one minion who have gotten close to one another. I’d suggest different primary colors - scales for the lizardmen and armor for the birdmen. The common design elements are enough to unify them that you don’t need a common color scheme.

   The mission settings are all generally reasonable, and I like the idea of turning the last mission into a pure final boss fight and the little wrinkle of the custom ambush.

   Gameplay - **. Standard caution: be careful with Build Up and all powers that work like it. Initial burst damage is bad enough, as enemies have recharged all their powers when you first engage. The addition just makes it swingier.

   Having ranged minions and melee higher ranks frustrates, especially when the minions can fly. Higher ranks tend to be priority targets because of their damage output and broader powerset, which if you use mostly ranged minions means that every fight ends with a bunch of weak targets who aren’t bunched up and won’t bunch up on their own - instead of the alternative with melee minions, which is a giant scrum that may go down to splash damage before the higher ranks and can easily be blown away at the end in any case. This isn’t to say never use ranged minions, but minions should close to melee at least as often than not.

   Also, the ludicrous interact times in the second mission don’t really do anything but frustrate, and because of the chaining there’s a decent amount of backtracking between levels to find these long-delay glowies as well.

   Detail - **. Empty descriptions on everybody, dense briefings with no highlighting to pick out the more important things, like time limits, and clues that are a combination of killboard and narration. Aside from maybe the handful I pick up on the space cruiser, they don’t really tell me anything that would fill out the plot, such as it is.

   Overall - **. There’s no particular destructive feedback at work here, aside from maybe the bit where a bunch of descriptionless mooks don’t have much character to latch onto. The easiest thing to fix would be either explicitly warning about the time limits or eliminating the ones where it doesn’t make sense for the timer to expire but the plot to move on.

   Posted on March 4th, 2011 at 12:00 am