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tobyf [2010-11-30 14:01:45 +0000 UTC]

Oookay, sorry for taking so long - I meant to reply back over a week ago, but things have really been busy on my side of the world, so I didn't really have much time until today.

Anyhow: I think you did a very good job - one can see that you put a lot of effort into your entry. It is probably the most detailed one in terms of having carefully laid out what would happen where, who the actors are, what they would say, what the quest objectives are, and so on. There are a lot of minor things that may be coincidence or not, but that I really appreciate: For one, you use a very similar style of writing as the quests that are already there, with actions *enclosed in stars* and including the objective of what players need to do. Not only it makes it easy to understand what it going on, it also means that pretty much your entire entry could be taken as-is and only require minimal changes to make it work. Marking the spots where actors are was a good idea too, it makes it very clear where exactly the key parts of your story would take place.

As for your story itself, I identified three quests - one being the assault with the eight grunts, one being a fight with a mini-boss like character, and the final one being bringing Icefeather to Thomas. The progression of difficulty does sound a little whacky - you start off with six monsters at once, move down to two (which should be really easy if you were just able to beat six at once). Next you have a mini-boss like character (you don't say how difficult it would be or what it can do, but I'd assume it should be more difficult than the previous quest), and finally end with a simply wrap-it-up quest that can't really be lost. So basically, it's like pretty hard - easy - hard.

The quests itself are definitely original - they might be somewhat similar to the quest where you get assaulted in the forest (Reserves in the Winter II, which also ends with a mini-boss fight), but the motives of the character and the story are totally different, which is a real plus. The one nitpick I have about the story itself is that it might be placing too much focus on a character that players will only be interacting for a short time. Icefeather sounds like she would be a key character in any story she is in - supernatural powers, strong and detailed character traits. Just by reading, feels like she is an extremely important character, which is also confirmed by Saeunn talking about world domination - but then you leave her at Thomas, and that really is it. It feels like the story is building up to a climax (you are saving someone really important that a lot of monsters, the grunts, insects, Saeunn, are extremely interested in), which then doesn't happen. That said, I like the flow of the story, and I believe it would be a very involving and entertaining ten minutes to play through.

As for the cooperation part, players can cooperate somewhat: The first quest is a little awkward, because the grunts and Icefeather need to wait for the player to catch up, which is when she faints and you have to save her. For other players passing by, this might look a little odd, because they probably shouldn't be able to interact with Icefeather and the two grunts before the player doing the quest comes in (which can take a while - imagine they start doing something else, or sign off). I can "fix" that by phasing that part (other players not on the quest won't see it), but that would mean that this part of the quest can't be done with random players. On the plus side, the mini-boss battle can very well be, especially since it takes on a part of the map that players usually pass through.

I considered the effort needed to implement the quest, and arrived at roughly five hours of work (seeing I need to completely animate Saeunn and the grunts from scratch, as I have no bird models in-game yet). I like that you re-use character models - Icefeather would use the wolf model and its animations, and Saeunn and the grunts look very similar, so they only really need one model despite being two different kind of monsters (Saeunn looks like a grunt with a few extra features). Personally I think it's pretty reasonable, seeing I would end up with another new monster class that could also be used elsewhere - so well worth the effort.

On my internal rating you reached 3,50 / 4,00, the exact same score as ~HornedDragon did (but with different strengths and different sub-scores on the various sub-parts). Seeing I was done with scoring the entries two weeks ago already I can tell you that I will award you both with the first place, with the same rewards. I'll contact you over notes about that.

Toby

👍: 0 ⏩: 2

tobyf [2010-11-13 17:54:09 +0000 UTC]

Nooo worries, I know a lot of words, and it'll take a lot to actually make me grab my dictionary! And I can cope with most spelling mistakes as well, so you'll be fine. Anyhow, just to let you know that I have received your entry - well on time, the contest doesn't close until tomorrow evening.

👍: 0 ⏩: 1