Zamuel

For the People
#530574 by @Todogut
Story and structure

Essentially, a lot of the arc's strength/weakness is a simultaneous mirror of what it is: an unapologetic homage to old school team up stories. It could be argued that parts of it might be a little hokey while at the same time that adds to the charm. Could potentially be polarizing to some but it's simply a stylistic choice. I'm only partially okay with directly referencing AE within the arc. You try to work it into the story somewhat but not sure if it's truly needed.

The arc has an inconsistent level range for its missions which may be annoying if the team leader is on the lower end of the level range.

The arc doesn't rely on customs so no need to worry about custom mob strength level. However, there is the concern of packing multiple AVs in the same area. In theory, your allies will help mitigate this but this can't be guaranteed due to various reasons such as spawn point locations. I actually used a Stalker for this to eye boss placement and sometimes kill a few on my own before unleashing the "aggro assistance". The last room in the final map particularly had a fair bit of craziness.

Speaking of mission 5, you might want to swap either Positron or Statesman's Front spawn point with Sister Psyche's Middle. Due to the Designated Helper system, you won't get her buffs if you rescue other allies first which will affect the difficulty of the fights you encounter. Especially when you take account of the fact that NPCs tend to be pretty good at keeping both the player and other allies buffed.

The arc could stand to have more descriptive titles for some of the objectives. A few were simply the enemy name as opposed to "Defeat <enemy name>". Most were fine though. Also, some of your clue colors were hard to read, mainly the dark ones. You might want to experiment with them a bit. I know SupaFreak did a forum thread showing a sizable range of color options in the Mission Architect section.

Spelling and grammar

Mission 3

[NPC] Back Alley Brawler: Hey, $name! Where did you go?
[NPC] Synapse: $name, don't move so fast! You left me behind!

Maybe it's just me but it seems like Synapse and BAB should switch quotes for when you get separated.


Mission 4 Outro

That's why we need to act quickly. Your team's mission is reconnaissance. Find out: what is the End Game weapon? And, if possible, destroy it.

Seems a little clunky and as currently worded, "what" should be capitalized. Would probably be better as...

That's why we need to act quickly. Your team's mission is reconnaissance. Find out what the End Game weapon is and, if possible, destroy it.


Mission 5

Holo Man's display name was Halo Man. Not sure if you made an accidental typo or if this was a subject of the obnoxious profanity/copyright filter like your workaround with Black Scorpion.

Use the unused. Going by various CoV maps, there are several islands in the Rogue Isles that could be added simply by populating them. If they truly are "untouched", they would be perfect for territorial control situations.

Looking at this, I feel a lot of the problem is that while the devs generally do a decent job listening to feedback, you tend to put yourselves in situations where you simply don't have the time and resources to respond. Like most complaints the past few months concerning costume sets. The amount of grief and walls of text would be spared if things were structured differently. Then there's things like Mission Architect that tend to not get much dev discussion. The useful thing about being able to talk with you guys is knowing how to channel our energy. If we know ABC isn't possible but DEF is, we can better plan out DEF rather than throwing ABCDEF all into the mix.

*looks at center costume*

The Merit Vendors are Carnies!

I think the structure is bad as opposed to the concept. Besides it's nice to actually use the zones sometimes rather than just instances. A nice update would be stating "anywhere in the zone" but actually increasing the amount of spawns of an enemy type if the hunt is active.

Yeah, Statesman deserves better...

*tosses gasoline on flames, runs*

It seems like you leaned a little too hard on the "letter of the law" so to speak than the spirit of the suggestion. While it could be argued that some mission writers script things too much, the concept of being able to use a tool for story telling. I guess I can see some of the hate since the devs have no middle ground. Either a zone gets blown up and filled with aliens/demons or it's totally untouched. In fact, the main part of the suggestion is that they need to make small adjustments here and there. Especially multiple missions that are back to back that do the same thing.

This. Also hope they have a little more forethought on some items as well.

Funny thing is that not reading them (yet) is likely the reason why I've pretty much never had a problem with him. I just see him as our Superman-guy. It could be argued that all of the Freedom Phalanx could stand to be given more attention in-game to flesh them out. That might be difficult with people's hatred of Jack Emmerett and feeling offended if attention is shifted off them for half a second but adding more depth to the NPCs makes it a more engaging game world. For instance, to my understanding Luminary actively enjoys music but in game she just seems like that boring robot in Talos.

Mortimer Kal SF. Plus, a number of redside cutscenes seem more likely to overtly mention the player by name or be treated as you interrupting the NPCs.

Arguably you could exempt or run AE. Of course, people complain about being lower level for the former and the latter is is openly shunned irregardless of mission choice.

My problem with Elliot is that he seems to fluctuate a fair bit between decent informational pieces (though they seem more aimed towards outsiders than CoH fans) and fluff opinion pieces like this article. More problematic is when he researches things for the former but it comes off as Did Not Do The Research due to the way presented or limited experience with the topic like the AT breakdowns he did a while back.