_jjac_

Feedback from this weekend:

@Zoner: Great arc ... excellent custom critters, great parody. More like this please! Our little team enjoyed it a lot.

@JediZork: Very cute! The custom enemies were very pun-ny! =o]

@Mighty Paladin: Someone had way too much fun making all those puns and lampshade hangings

@Foggy Norman : pink spartan underpants

AND YOU'LL NEVER UNSEE IT.

@Death Ghost : pretty funny, good job

@Science Phreak : Cleverly done parody, sir, cleverly done. Keep up the good work!

@GodOfUselessKnowledge : pretty good

@Saber-Claw : Nice job, funny story

@Sticky McHaggis : very nice job. the story was good (and funny) as were the clues left by lazarus. i thought the custom villains were awesome, as was their dialogue. all-in-all a very good mission arc. kudos

@Ham Salad : great as always, but maybe in the last mission cut down on the number of dirtpiles

Well, that glowie sound DOES get annoying...

There were also complaints about the lieutenants in mission 4. Now they no longer have web grenade, so it should be less annoying on large teams. I also plan to expand this arc a bit once I15 goes live and shrinks my filesize a dozen percent. Statesman DID have a couple of super pals, after all...

Eclipse Over Paragon (64609) would definitely fit Darkfire, and possibly Taraklis.

I'm gonna try your Blappy arc, so here's my request:

Title: The History of Statesman
Arc ID: 219484
Creator’s Global Name: @jjac
Mission Count: 4

The History of Statesman
Arc ID 219484
Long (4 Missions)
Heroic
All Custom Groups
SFMA HFMA NCMA

So, I decided to give back to the game a bit by doing a tribute arc to one of the greatest and most celebrated in-game heroes of all time! Now, I'm not much of a history buff, so there might be some inaccuracies scattered here and there .

Mender Lazarus also drops by to make sense of some things so if you ever feel lost, he'll be there.

Feedback is very appreciated, it may be complete but it's not as refined as my other arcs. If you have any suggestions, comments or details I happened to forget feel free to post them here. Have fun!

A Tangle in Time (2622) and Eclipse Over Paragon (64609) are lowbie-friendly. The latter has a EB in the end so I suggest you stay on Heroic to tone it down to a boss.

Feel free to pick any of the arcs in my signature. They're ordered by personal preference, but you can choose one based on what gets you your jollies: Time travel, werewolves or orcs. kk have fun

#2622: A Tangle in Time
Levels 5-54
Reviewed by @LaserJesus in thread 1
Rewrote dialogue to accomodate roleplayers

I have updated A Tangle in Time and Eclipse Over Paragon to be more lowbie-friendly, with level ranges 5-54 and 1-54 respectively. If you never had the chance to try these arcs because you were too low level, now's your chance to give em a whirl!

Still, A Tangle in Time might pose a bit of a challenge, because hey, Circle of Thorns am I right?

PoliceWoman's feedback on A Tangle in Time:

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Overall
The only things I'd suggest would be to add a few clues to help the player understand what is going on; the time loop could be very easily confusing to many players and some exposition would be helpful. Adding a souvenir would be nice, also.

I gave this arc 5 stars.


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And thus, the arc is updated. More clues, a souvenir and the last mission is re-ordered just a bit. Try it out if you haven't yet!

Have you tried 'Passion of the Heist' yet?

Hmm, I know I left a clue after Mobey's rescue. Here it is from the editor:

"Ouroboros, MAGI, Midnighters, their views of the time stream are far too grand, far too encompassing. They'll never see the tiny imperfections... Imperfections like you.

They'll never know, and even if they somehow did, I can always rewind! Face it $name, I'm your only way out of this!"

Regardless, I put clues at the end of every encounter with him (and other objectives) to reinforce the story.

As for the amulets, I highlighted the text orange every time you received one as foreshadowing, but I didn't want to blatantly say that you were carrying multiples. Wanted it to be that 'Eureka' moment when things start to look up again.

As for grammar/spelling corrections, those are always welcome! ...as soon as I figure out the Unicode for accents.

Thanks for the feedback and good word!

I don't think I have room in the feedback window in-game, so I'll post it here.

Wyvern are mercenaries, but they still have good intentions (working under Manticore and all) so it would be out of place for them to steal artifacts and keep them for themselves. You could probably switch them to Sky Raiders (or Council / Column since they span 1-54) and more or less get the same result.

Since you'll be going through this map 5 times, give it more life by adding more 'useless' mission elements, like a hostage in the beginning that you'll eventually ask for a password to access the terminal, but in return he'll need his valuables back from a crate you overlooked. The powerful artifact can attract other factions to the warehouse, maybe ones you'll side with in the future?

You can also add hints to what you'll be doing in the next mission to give the player a motive instead of outright telling them what they'll do next at the entrance dialogue box. One mission for example can have the boss say on defeat: "Lock down that computer! $name can't know about this!". Guess what the objective of the next mission is?

As Karl above mentioned several times, the writing can be refined. I'm no real writer myself, but I find that if I recite the dialogue I'll easily find what sounds natural, flows well, and what doesn't.

It's going to be a long journey making this arc interesting from mission 1 to 5, especially due to its repetitive theme. My time loop arc, A Tangle in Time has been around since open beta, and I still make changes to this day. I wish you best of luck, and I hope you have fun tweaking this every step of the way.

^^^ I've incorporated the corrections, thank you for your thorough feedback!

And some positive feedback by PoliceWoman on Eclipse over Paragon:

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Eclipse over Paragon review

Overall
Overall I thought this was a good arc, fairly well written. Nothing really grabbed me as a moment of pure awesomeness, though the mutated versions of Fusionette, Jim Temblor and Flower Knight came close; I kinda think maybe you could develop these guys a little more for extra fun. Colleen made sense as a contact for a Council arc but I didn't get a sense that she had a whole lot of personality other than just being someone to give you missions, and the arc overall, while functional, didn't quite give me a sense of immersion. Not quite sure how to make that happen. Perhaps you could add a side plot where the player thinks she got exposed to some of the nictus water, and over the course of mission entrance/exit popups and clues, starts feeling itchy or getting urges to bay at the moon or other snippets that make the player worried they are getting afflicted by the war wolf disease. Giving the heroes who got wolfed some more dialog and personality would help too. Still, this story was pretty good and I liked it, so I gave it 4 stars.


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I added more clues in the beginning, particularly to the Archons to help reinforce the story. I have also made it more involving; I knew I couldn't actually change the player itself, and if I did as much as hint it all the roleplaying robots, furries and untaintable godlike Mary Sues would complain about it.

Welp, I can't please everyone; if it'll help many more to get into the story, all the better for most of us. Also, because of all the text additions, it'll be one less boss at the end due to space.

Thank you for the detailed feedback and the good word!

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Eclipse over Paragon review

Overall
Overall I thought this was a good arc, fairly well written. Nothing really grabbed me as a moment of pure awesomeness, though the mutated versions of Fusionette, Jim Temblor and Flower Knight came close; I kinda think maybe you could develop these guys a little more for extra fun. Colleen made sense as a contact for a Council arc but I didn't get a sense that she had a whole lot of personality other than just being someone to give you missions, and the arc overall, while functional, didn't quite give me a sense of immersion. Not quite sure how to make that happen. Perhaps you could add a side plot where the player thinks she got exposed to some of the nictus water, and over the course of mission entrance/exit popups and clues, starts feeling itchy or getting urges to bay at the moon or other snippets that make the player worried they are getting afflicted by the war wolf disease. Giving the heroes who got wolfed some more dialog and personality would help too. Still, this story was pretty good and I liked it, so I gave it 4 stars.


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I added more clues in the beginning, particularly to the Archons to help reinforce the story. I have also made it more involving; I knew I couldn't actually change the player itself, and if I did as much as hint it all the roleplaying robots, furries and untaintable godlike Mary Sues would complain about it.

Welp, I can't please everyone; if it'll help many more to get into the story, all the better for most of us. Also, because of all the text additions, it'll be one less boss at the end due to space.

Thank you for the detailed feedback and the good word!

Also, apart from Eclipse Over Paragon's NPC change, I've tweaked A Tangle in Time's story to cater more heroic interests. Some other dialogue tweaks as well.

Blargrimmar Wants You!'s custom group gets a balance tweak. No more stacked shields or Ninjitsu.

If you haven't played these yet, now would be a great time. Feedback would be very appreciated.

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Arc #2622: A Tangle in Time
Rating: 1 star
The short of it: Plot issues, claims to be heroic when it's not, custom bosses potentially too powerful

Story

Where do I begin? I guess a good place was my character murdering the police. I'm not even talking "rough them up a bit", I'm saying that it was expressly stated in the arc that I was dealing lethal blows to them, and the only reason why they did not die is because of the medical teleporter. That's a couple dozen counts of attempted murder right there, which is easily consecutive life sentences or a death penalty. My hero, and I assume most peoples, would never even think of that as a viable option, especially when so many others exist. Even though Azuria's apparently too retarded to even check out my time loop story, a hero of at least 35+ easily has an extensive enough network of contacts and people who owe them favors to get themselves looked at, both by scientists who know a thing or two about time travel and by magicians who could check out your character to see if any enchantments or curses had been placed on them. Working with a known criminal to murder police is not even close to the top of the list for options to be taken to fix the problem.

I touched on this in the last review as well, Azuria's not stupid. Sure, MAGI has a bad rap for keeping artifacts secure, but that has nothing to do with Azuria. The MAGI vault is in Galaxy City. If anyone's letting criminals into the vault on a regular basis, it's Gregor Richardson. Judging by his attitude, I wouldn't be surprised if he was on the take. Azuria is one of the best mystics in the world according to the Lost Cure arc, so it should take her no time flat to check to see if you've been cursed to be in a time loop. Upon finding out, she would know (since she does later in the arc) that destroying the altar is the best option at this point.



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I don't know where you got the idea that your character was willingly ending the lives of the Paragon Police. I stated that part of their rationale for hurting the PPD was the medical teleporters saving them anyway.

As for Azuria, I never before had a complaint about her acting out of character, so I figured I was going the right direction. I could do an overhaul, but between the notion that AE content is non-canon in the first place, and the commonly accepted idea of Azuria being a forgetful ditz, I'm having second thoughts.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. Sorry to hear it wasn't to your liking.

vvvv Consider it considered. New tag: [WARNING: THIS ARC CONTAINS FIGHTING]

Two tidbits of feedback, and an arc update:

dragonslay:
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A Tangle in Time 2622
Rating 4 Stars

I ran this arc with a lvl 50 Ice/Ice Blaster on diff 1.

Overall this is a very fun and funny arc about being caught in a time loop. Four of the missions occur on the same map and fortunately it is a small map. There is a slight twist in each mish although honestly four out of the five are very similar. The story is well written and the players thoughts are presented as well. The entire arc is CoT and PPD (there are 2 custom critters) and both are fun to kill. Contact dialogue is humorous at times, easy to follow and brief (three great qualities).

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HolyEvilAoD
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Eclipse Over Paragon (64609)
30-50 range


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4 out of 5 stars

I do think the "comedy" character is misplaced (and he's definitely a joke character. His bio is pretty obviously meant to be a joke) and he adds nothing to the arc. I suppose you're supposed to feel sorry for him, but as he's not legitimately funny, he doesn't.

Still, a good strong arc.

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Bladeskrieg was supposed to be part character cameo, part placeholder and part comedy relief.

But he's gone now. Praise the lawd. I finally figured out a replacement and got someone much more appropriate to take his place.

Thanks for the feedback and good word!

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Eclipse Over Paragon (64609)
30-50 range


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4 out of 5 stars

I do think the "comedy" character is misplaced (and he's definitely a joke character. His bio is pretty obviously meant to be a joke) and he adds nothing to the arc. I suppose you're supposed to feel sorry for him, but as he's not legitimately funny, he doesn't.

Still, a good strong arc.

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Bladeskrieg was supposed to be part character cameo, part placeholder and part comedy relief.

But he's gone now. Praise the lawd. I finally figured out a replacement and got someone much more appropriate to take his place.

Thanks for the feedback and good word!

I believe all my arcs folllow your criteria.

Blargrimmar Wants You! (4572) is a light-hearted comedy arc while A Tangle in Time (2622) and Eclipse Over Paragon (64609) are more serious stories. Take your pick, though Eclipse has the least ratings so you can go for that if you want.

A Tangle in Time (2622)
Eclipse Over Paragon (64609)

Both story driven, 5 missions long and recommended for soloing. Though you can try Blargrimmar Wants You! (4572) if you want something more light-hearted.

Beach_Lifeguard reviews Eclipse Over Paragon:

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Overall this was a fun arc that uses existing story lines, and takes them a little further. Anybody who likes the council and the wolves should give this a try. 5 stars!


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Pick your poison:

@jjac
A Tangle in Time - 2622
Eclipse Over Paragon - 64609

If you want to see a very well done single mission I recommend A Tangle in Time (2622). You'll know which one.

Eclipse Over Paragon (64609) is based on the Path of Darkness arc. A Tangle in Time (2622) is also story-driven, so feel free to try these two out.

I would like you try either A Tangle in Time (2622) or Eclipse Over Paragon (64609). They're both in the 30-50 range, soloable and very story driven. They also have 5 missions each but a good chunk of them use small or tiny maps.