TricKsteR80 on 30/3/2010 at 17:18
Thanks for this mission Lady Rowena :) It hooks me with all the ambience it gives with the music, the city, the whole story, etc.
I played it for the third time and I got problems in Night Two with some items that I couldn't pick (not frobable) like money in locked safe, the wheel peg and Ophelia's journal, and an objective that I couldn't complete (Save at least 6 plagued citizens) even if I did actually healed most the plagued (save one who was killed by guards).
I did restart the game from the beginning and it fixed this. Guess it is some bug which I experience sometimes in FM.
Lady Rowena on 31/3/2010 at 02:49
Sorry to hear that you had to restart the mission. :( Fortunately you managed to play it at last. It seems a bug related to missing scripts, for some reason they didn't load the first time you played.
I hope that it wasn't too much annoying and that you enjoyed it anyway. :)
TricKsteR80 on 31/3/2010 at 14:00
Oh that was just a little inconvenient. I just changed my itinerary so I do my objectives in a different path. Seven Sisters, like a lot of FM, gives the opening in our choice of completing the mission so it's not linear.
So yes, I did enjoy the replaying and will enjoy it again in the future ;)
bassmanret on 13/6/2010 at 14:06
Wow! It takes alot to "wow" me, but "WOW!".
I just finished this FM, and I loved it more than any FM I've played in years! The city was so well-designed and fun to explore, and the way the city is "opened up" to the player is pure genius!
On a personal level, the only down-side to my playing this FM is that it showed me that I was NOT the first FM author to put the ideas of burrick butchery, burrick domestication, or a "set the burrick free" objective into a FM as I thought I had with JFP2. Silly me. I'm sure there are players out there who think I "stole" these ideas, and that makes me sad, but there's nothing to be done about it now.
Lady Rowena, thank you so very, VERY MUCH for an awesome FM! :thumb::)
Lady Rowena on 13/6/2010 at 15:46
Sorry for that, bassmanret, but it happens more often than you could think.
While I was building the 7Sisters I had the idea of making a journal (nothing in comparison to CoSaS), and suddenly they released a preview of Mission X with the (wonderful) paper.
Again, I was preparing a warning/pestilence poster, and I had to slightly change the text, because DrK released his UNAR2 and the poster was practically identical! :D Apart from the details, the pestilence theme itself was highly overused, and I felt so discouraged! :(
Maybe, as an (in)famous musician once said, the music is somewhere in the air all you have to do is to catch it and make a song. The same is true for the FMs, perhaps?
Thanks for the compliments, I'm really glad that you enjoyed the campaign. :)
BTW no one recognized the musician in one of the missions...:cool:
Vigilante on 17/6/2010 at 06:13
I'd just like to add some criticism for one of the most highly praised FM campaigns ever..... Before I criticize let me say I think its reputation is mostly justified. And the only reason I criticize is because, I figure I'm one voice in a cacophony of praise.
So, the first two nights are great. And much of the third is as well. Until you go through the mouth and descend into my own personal hell. Piles and piles of enemies, very little shadow, and to top it all off, barely any health support items(I found one purple fruit). Let me tell you, I entered the mouth with three health on expert. I finished with one health. Oh, and many of the enemies can only be killed, not blackjacked, and what you need to kill them is your special arrows that you probably haven't been hoarding because there's been no reason to.
Here's the thing, I spent 90% of these sections simply running like hell, because I had no special arrows left to hurt Smoke or Water or Earth. The smoke section was doable since there weren't straight lines of sight and some shadows. But these giant underground rooms filled with snakemen and craymen and mantis and trees and barely any cover? Please. I used like 10 water arrows on the fire guys, till I was out.
The main good idea these areas were built around was the elemental people....their quantity did not make these sections better, just more tedious. Limiting their number and cutting the extraneous enemies out would stop these from being annoying. Or give me more cover! Or more health! Cause after no kills the first two nights I felt like I was playing Diablo with all the killing I did. I could have gone even slower, but at this point in the story it was simply tedious. Something the rest of the series wasn't!
I have reiterate, the campaign as whole is wonderful, and the map design of the final areas is still great, and very atmospheric. But these rooms just devalue it in my mind.
theBlackman on 17/6/2010 at 08:28
I really have to disagree with you Vigilante. If you take your time and are patient, you can do nearly the entire mission with minimal expenditures of arrows.
In the Maze, you find ammunition laying in the paths for you to pickup and use. In fact, nearly the entire Seven Sisters is loaded with ammo for you to pickup (water just as you enter the pagan village; Moss in the mazes; Fire in the area with the priestess; numerous types in the tree houses; water arrows in the lake; various arrows in the temple where the final sister is, and so on.
The only "sneaky" one is that first Rope arrow. The weapons shop gets you started, then the canals give you more and so on. As for "fruit", you can get through the game nearly unscathed if you exercise intelligent "Thiefy" skills.
Vigilante on 17/6/2010 at 17:19
Quote Posted by theBlackman
I really have to disagree with you Vigilante. If you take your time and are patient, you can do nearly the entire mission with minimal expenditures of arrows.
In the Maze, you find ammunition laying in the paths for you to pickup and use. In fact, nearly the entire Seven Sisters is loaded with ammo for you to pickup (water just as you enter the pagan village; Moss in the mazes; Fire in the area with the priestess; numerous types in the tree houses; water arrows in the lake; various arrows in the temple where the final sister is, and so on.
The only "sneaky" one is that first Rope arrow. The weapons shop gets you started, then the canals give you more and so on. As for "fruit", you can get through the game nearly unscathed if you exercise intelligent "Thiefy" skills.
I know you "can" get through unscathed, but notice that your mission objective no longer has the no kill requirement. Meaning it's very unlikely that anyone would do this given the options at hand. I've ghosted many missions on Expert, Art of Thievery included, so don't presume I don't know what stealth is all about. At this point it was just tedious. It's probably partly my personal preference that I don't feel giant open rooms with barely any cover should be used. But coming this late in the campaign is the real mistake for me. When you you the six keys and enter the portal it feels like the climax is coming, but then it's just piles of enemies and more and more keys to collect. No loot besides black diamonds, so there's not anything to distract from yet another cave full of monsters. So I guess it's also a pacing issue.
theBlackman on 17/6/2010 at 18:18
No disrespect of your skills or ability. I will concur that the exit passage is as you say. My remarks were more toward your comment about the lack of equipment, not a comment on your play technique.
Lady Rowena on 17/6/2010 at 20:33
@Vigilante
First of all, sorry if in any way I misunderstood what you wrote, you know, I'm not an English speaker.
Sorry to have created what you call "your personal hell". You will not believe it, but one tester said that "Night Tree" was the best mission of the campaign. :D
Also, I have to remind you that you choose to play on expert, not "piece of cake".
Night Three, as the other two is perfectly ghostable, if you desire to. But I don't like ghosting myself, so I understand if you don't like it too.
You could blackjack all the enemies but the Fire Shadows and the Smoke Shadows.
If you are no so patient, then you can kill them. As for the Smoke Shadows, they could be killed with no more than 2 moss arrows. There is a hint about that liying around, and there was enough of them to kill them all. As for the Fire Shadows, there weren't "hordes", they were only 2, killable with 2 water arrows each and 2 fire elemental, killable with 1 water arrow.
If you missed the water arrows in the lake at the beginning, you could easily return there with the teleports.
On one thing you are right though, the lack of health beyond the teleporter. I realized that I only put 2 fruits, only one available for those who played on expert. I can't remember why I did it, I don't even remember the testers to have complained about it. Sorry.
All in all, I think that either you didn't like the environment of that part of the mission, or you were simply tired to play and wanted to finish it as soon as possible. Both reasons are completely understandable. On my part, I tend to build missions that I would like to play myself, as everyone of the authors do, I think, not to sadistically distress and annoy the players.
Fortunately you managed at least to enjoy the first two mission and, I hope, also part of the last one. Thanks for playing :)
