anachrodragon

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  1. anachrodragon

    AE- I'm very sad

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    I'm with you. More power to NCSoft if it keeps their bottom line from shrinking as the years tick by, but NCSoft, [u]Please, please add a better way for people to get pick up groups going for non-AE missions![u]

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    I think the LFG system could use an overhaul.

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    Among other things, it would be nice to see a "groups looking for more" component.
  2. ^^^

    Since Geekboy is here and I realized that I forgot to mention his arc:


    Arc ID 51728 - Speeding Through Time
    This is a well written arc with an engaging character for the contact, and one of the missions in particular is just a ton of frenetic fun. I've recommended this to three or four of my friends, and they all loved it.
  3. My arc Tailor Made has over 20 destructible objects (was trying for a mayhem mission-esque feel), so I spent a good portion of my evening resetting them and then testing. I also had a generator among them, so I had to replace that with something else. That was pretty annoying.

    Anyway, I hope they re-add the generator. There's nothing else similar from a story perspective, so I imagine a lot of folks will have to make heavy changes to their arcs.
  4. I've said this before, but I'm in favor of a personally customizable front page. That way if I want to set it so that I see a certain type of arc, I can do that.

    Lets say I want to default to showing arcs with the "humor" keyword, and like 1 and 2 star ratings (pretend I'm looking for bad humor), then I should be able to do that.

    Personally I'm not really that interested in the Dev's choice arcs, so I'd rather not see them up front, but I'd really like some choice of what I have on my front page display.
  5. Here are some of my picks that jumped immediately to mind.

    Arc 26811 - Love is in the Error
    A story about helping the Kraken find true love. Absurd and hillarious. I can't play this without grinning like an idiot.

    Arc 2180 - Bricked Electronics
    A solid story, and a very good lowbie arc. This is actually one of my favorite lowbie arcs, and I've run it a few times. Plus the game needs more stories involving Goldbrickers, so there you go.

    Arc 159140 - Challenge of the Splendid Pals - Episodes 1-3
    A Superfriends-esque story with some really great custom mobs, also some innuendo. There are two other Splendid Pals arcs that continue the story (159131 and 179871) and those have fantastic custom groups as well.

    Arc 164235 - Poi, Demonology, and Everything I Learned From Hellions
    Shameless promotion here. This is my husband's arc, but it really is a must play for me. Every time I roll a brand new hero, I head for this arc. It's a short alternate take on your hero's early adventures in Paragon, and it's gratifying because it shows that even lowbies have something to offer the veterans at times.

    I also want to agree that Celebrity Kidnapping was a great arc. Highly recommended.
  6. [ QUOTE ]
    Feel free to try my arc, the Arc ID is in my signature, it's level 1-14 story arc.

    All feedback welcome

    [/ QUOTE ]

    This is for: A proper heist, Arc ID: 82059

    First I have to apologize for not having a long review. I was making some notes, and lost them due to computer issues, and also it's late and I'm falling asleep.

    I liked this arc. It's exactly what it's advertised as: a simple arc for lowbies. I could easily see playing this on a brand new villain as a break from the usual Mercy Island fare.

    I do remeber a couple of things I thought I'd point out (minor stuff, doesn't figure into the rating)

    In mission 2 the nav bar is redundant with the objective. They both say "Save Sammy".

    Also the souvenir says "coins" when I think you meant "coin"

    Overall, it was a short sweet arc, with a simplistic, yet consistent story.

    Rating: 4 Stars
  7. [ QUOTE ]
    [ QUOTE ]
    The Next War on Drugs
    Arc ID: 245042
    Levels: AutoSK to 18-20 but completely playable by lower
    Length: 5 missions (most are short). 45 min
    Description: Street crime and drug trafficking are on the rise in Paragon City, and Back Alley Brawler wants your help to fight back. Learn about the history of the War on Drugs and investigate new threats. (More story than XP. Short quick missions, for lowbie/teen heroes. AutoSK)

    Notes: For those who don't mind a lot of story in their story arcs. It's admittedly text heavy, but I hope I've somewhat made up for it by making the missions quick.

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    4-starred. Some comments:

    Mission 1: The Troll dialogue seems a little low key. That's me being nitpicky though.

    Mission 2: I'm not sure that Security Guards are a good pick to be watching over the warehouse and mission objective. Why not the Skulls? They seem appropriately low tier and in line.

    Mission 3: I liked this one. I've been pondering how to do an ally-filled mission for a while, and I think this has given me a few ideas. Also, I won't ever again complain about the amount of text that ends up in my own arcs.

    Thanks for putting me in the queue.

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    Thanks for playing it. I appreciate the feedback.

    I think the Trolls are influenced by my first arc, where I've got a mission full of dumb Trolls with dumb dialog. I should really revisit this one and give them more aggressive dialog.

    Yeah, the security guards. I'm not 100% happy with them either. I'd considered Skulls but I'm kind of stuck in that I don't want to vary the level range so much that it's annoying for people. Skulls cap out at 14, Supa Trolls are like 19, the Family I wanted to use seem to come in at 20.

    The other thing I've considered in that mission is, instead of using a body bag, use like a barrel or something, and say it contains the guy's head. At least then it would make more sense that the security guards don't even know what's in the warehouse.

    I'm glad you liked mission 3. I knew I was taking a risk with that, but decided to go for it anyway.

    The main thing, above all else, that I was concerned about while writing this, was if the dialog suited Back Alley Brawler. I don't think anyone's had an issue with that so far, so if I did alright on that account, then I'm happy.

    Thanks again for the feedback. I'll play yours tomorrow night.
  8. Thanks for putting this together. I think your description of us is pretty right on:

    (except you misspelled "Londerwost")

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    Anachrodragon and Londerwost: Two reviewers for the price of one. They are looking for lowbie friendly arcs as they are both admitted altaholics. Their reviews tend to be mostly on how well they enjoyed the story and how much fun they had playing the arc. They have their nitpicks, but so far seem to be pretty easygoing and friendly, as well as offering some advice on things they think are problematic.

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    We do tend to be pretty easygoing, because ultimately folks are putting their sweat and tears into their arcs and we want to give people appreciation for the work they do. Arcs that look like effort was put into them will generally get at least a 3 from me. Arcs that are polished and fun with decent story, will likely get a 4 at least. The fine line between 4 and 5 is highly subjective but often comes down to "how entertaining was it?" and "how engaging was the story?"

    I have to say that we've already played a lot of arcs that we've found more entertaining than the dev created arcs, so we want to thank people for that.
  9. [ QUOTE ]
    Well, it's good to see somebody doing lowbies. None of my missions are designed for characters over 30... yet.

    2180 is workable with lowbies of any level.
    1874 is for anybody who can handle Tsoo.
    5073 is designed for 20-30 villains. Villain 30-40 Carnies are fightable in that range, has been my experience. But it's currently experiencing some weirdness - I've received reports of the Carnie mission not actually spawning anything for 30-40 villains to fight, though I haven't managed to reproduce it.

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    Glazius, you should know that we've played all of yours and loved them. Honestly, Bricked Electronics is one of my very favorite lowbie arcs, and I've actually played it multiple times on this recent crop of lowbies. (One time in a full team of baby goons even. That made the last mission really hectic.)

    So you don't get no stinkin' reviews. Your arcs have already gotten 5 Star ratings from both of us!
  10. I would just change Conserve Power to Conserve Energies or something. Don't remove the endurance discount part, just heavily nerf it. Then add a +HP component to the power.
  11. I've been meaning to try this one, but I keep forgetting. Perhaps now is the time! Londer and I will probably try it over the weekend if not sooner.
  12. [ QUOTE ]
    (I swear I fixed all the spelling errors but I guess I either missed some or it didn't take).

    [/ QUOTE ]

    This has to be a hidden "feature" of the MA. I can't even tell you how many times I've fixed something just to have it automagically reappear.
  13. The updated queue:

    Sometime this week:
    A Proper Heist, arc ID: 82059
    City of Ho Ho Ho, or A Claus in Paragon, arc ID: 18775
    Captain Dynamic, the Great, Faces the Great Face, arc ID: 190069
    Teen Phalanx Forever!, arc ID: 67335
    All Consuming, arc ID: #261148

    At some point these will get reviewed:
    Lockdown, arc# 250142
    BE Prologue: Gangs United, arc# 250480
    Justice_Blues' Low level triligy, arc#4727, 70801, 255895 (might want to play a couple of our arcs for doing this one :P )
    TheDeepBlue's arcs 1402, 61866, 2260 (we'll probably pick one of these, or more if you play our arcs)
    Big Trouble Kings Row Style! Arc ID: 259924
  14. Mecha Mutiny: Quatrexin's Quandary, arc ID 246604

    First I want to say that I really enjoyed this arc. I thought the story was good, and fighting a variety of robots was really pretty awesome. I feel really bad about giving this arc an average rating. There was just a lot of detail missing, and even some frustrations in play, so I felt I couldn't give a higher rating right now. However, this stuff is easily fixable, so please make some adjustments and we will absolutely run it again and re-rate it higher.

    Here's some feedback I made note of while we were playing it:

    Mission 1

    There is a strange run-on sentence in the intro text: "Well this 'Edison' project went rogue this morning as well and Lord Recluse would like to keep it secret from the other factions of Vanguard and is willing to pay top dollar for the help."

    There are a lot of Vanguard powersuit guys, but they all have standard descriptions for Arachnos, Crey, etc... Add custom descriptions here to explain them

    None of the objectives had clues

    End text "The Clockwork King", "heros"

    Mission 2

    "suspitions" misspelling in the mission begin text

    I liked the still busy text "No! Get your own armor!"

    There was a popup in the beginning of the first mission but no popup in the second one

    Nav bar title is "defeat clockwork maiden" and a mission objective is also "defeat clockwork maiden"

    Defeat maiden objective didn't end with defeat of the maiden, had to clear the whole room to find the right mobs to end the objective. Suggest changing all boss type objectives to boss only.

    Killing lots of robots is lots of fun!

    End text mentions a transmitter. What transmitter? I don't have a clue regarding a transmitter

    Mission 3

    Beginning text mentions "greater Paragon-RI area" I'm not sure if you mean Paragon and Rhode Island, or Paragon and the Rogue Isles. Keep in mind that Paragon and the Rogue Isles are not nearby each other.

    "transmitions" misspelling

    Why are vanguard friendly now?

    A few more glowies than I would have liked, also the elite bosses looked awesome, but were a pain in the butt. Suggest reducing glowie interact time (to minimize interruption) and maybe number of glowies down to 5 or 6.

    Mission 4

    The hint seems strange in the popup. Popups usually add to the atmosphere, not break the atmosphere. I would move the hint to the mission accept text and put it in parentheses.

    The placement of the elite bosses made them difficult to avoid. We would have taken them, but our brutes were under leveled as it was, so we wound up zerging past them, with mixed results.

    Mission 5

    Nav bar is "defeat edison prime", objective is also defeat edison prime.

    Please, if you make no other changes to this arc, change this objective to defeat boss only. We pulled the boss off the top of the scaffold, and watched with horror as the mission did not complete after we killed him. At that point, I turned to Londer and asked "do you want to fight our way up there and try to find the boss group? Or should we quit out?" We decided to quit out at that point because it was already taking longer than an hour, and we weren't feeling well.

    So anyway, overall I really liked the story, I liked killing robots, and I really wanted to rate it higher. And I will rate it higher with added detail and cleanup. Add clues, polish the text up, adjust a few objectives, and this will be an excellent arc.

    Rating: 3 Stars (I know we didn't quite finish it, but we got really close so I figured I'd go ahead and give a rating)
  15. [ QUOTE ]
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    Unfortunately he's sick, and I'm starting to get sick.

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    Uh oh! Troll flu?

    Take your time and feel better.

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    Thanks! I knew I shouldn't have inappropriately touched those Trolls!
  16. [ QUOTE ]
    how did cappadabba get to be the AE place to go to anyway and not mercy?

    [/ QUOTE ]

    I'm guessing because no one wants to hang around Mercy longer than absolutely necessary. Also Cap has easy access to the market and the Rogue Isles ferry, so it's become more of a gathering spot.

    Anyway, I would be fine with AE buildings being removed from AP and Galaxy, and Mercy I guess. I would not be fine with XP being removed from AE missions. As things stand now, my husband and I play AE missions for the stories and the varieties of content. We do enjoy XP and leveling occasionally though. It's sort of the mainstay of playing a MMO.

    No we don't PL, and I won't cry if some of the obviously exploitive holes get removed. I won't cry if the grievous abusers get smacked down. However, that being said, I wouldn't want them to remove maps that are actually challenging. Some of the AE content is actually more challenging than dev content, and also delivers a large share of rewards. I think stuff like this is fine and should stay as-is.

    This game has always had its share of PLing and farming, and honestly nerfing the MA is not going to change that. As I've said before, I don't even know if they should try to wipe out PLing. I think discouraging it is fine, so it's not so annoyingly ubiquitous in chat channels, but really there will always be a subset of PLers. If they go about their business quietly and don't bother everyone else, I don't really care.

    Anyway, I don't agree with heavy handed nerfing of MA. If they want to do something more targeted to the abusers, that's fine though.

    I'll add this too. Someone messaged my husband on his 50 scrapper last night.

    Noob: Can you help me get to 50 fast?
    My husband: Why? what are you going to do at 50?
    Noob: 50 is were the real game starts.
    My husband: Um I think you may have forgotten what game you're playing...

    (no response from noob)
  17. I will throw my and my husband's low level arcs on the pile. They're both short arcs and intended to be lighthearted and humorous (we hope).

    Title: Tailor Made
    Arc ID: 258291
    Creator’s Global Name: @anachrodragon
    Faction: Villainous
    Levels: 20-29
    Mission Count: 2
    Notes – Designed for villains in the 20s or high teens (will AutoSK to 20). Intended to work both solo and teamed. There are only a couple objectives in the large second mission, but lots of optional stuff to smash, so it can be either quick or long depending on your own pace.


    Title: Poi, Demonology, and Everything I Learned From Hellions
    Arc ID: 164235
    Creator’s Global Name: @londerwost
    Faction: Heroic
    Levels: 1-14
    Mission Count: 2
    Notes – Designed for brand new heroes. This was play tested on a level 2 fresh out of Outbreak. It's intended to be something simple and fun for lowbies to get their feet wet with. Also, the second mission was supposed to be on a 45 minute timer, but timed hostage missions are bugged in I15, so it's untimed for now.

    Also, if you have any lowbie arcs of your own, please feel free to add them to our review thread.
  18. [ QUOTE ]
    I couldn't find a thread for Manifesto so I assume it's ok to do a brief review here.

    The Liquefactionist Manifesto
    Arc ID: 191029
    Levels: 1-20
    Length: 5 missions, 45 minutes

    My reviews are allways more gameplay oriented but I do enjoy a fun story and good writing, and this arc has both. I loved it! Very funny! I found myself clicking on glowies I didn't need just to see what it would say .

    My villain is an idiot for listening to this freak, but she's just a level 5 sonic/dark corruptor so what does she know?

    As for gameplay, also great! Balanced perfect for lowbies, I will defenitely play this again with friends some day to level our lowbies.

    I'm afraid I can't offer much criticism, I really enjoyed it!

    Totally gross and totally hilarious. I normally dislike excessive glowy use in missions but all of yours made me at least smile if not lol.

    If anything I would have liked a little more! 3 of the maps are extremely small and even the cave was pretty small. It kind of felt wrong to me that the only map of any real size was in the first mission. I would have defenitely preferred a larger map for the final mission to more fully relish my revenge.

    Overall great job! Really nice variety in missions and critters including a very fun custom group.

    Five stars! Highly recommended for lowbie villains with a strong stomach

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Awesome! I'm glad you liked Manifesto!

    I never have any expectations about what people will think of that one, because the comments have ranged from "Hilarious" to "You sick @!$%&", and I think both opinions are probably equally valid.

    I think the map sizes reflect my own desire to try to make stuff fit under an hour. When you have to play test something over and over again, it kind of makes you gravitate toward shorter maps. I'm really honored to know you'd like to see more of it though.

    Thanks for playing my arc. This moves your arc to the top of the list, and we'll play it tonight as long as we're both feeling up to it. Unfortunately he's sick, and I'm starting to get sick.
  19. My husband and I played In Poor Taste together over the weekend. I think we played it on my 35 WP/SM tank and his 35 Ice/MM blaster. We both really enjoyed it. I think we both gave it 4 stars. It was very clever and really would have been a 5 stars, but we both felt like Manhandle was the funniest of the bunch, and you sort of "shoot your wad" so to speak, too early in the arc. Personally I would probably move Terrible Wind to the first boss, and save Manhandle for a bit later.

    In any case, I hope you'll try both of our arcs below. They're both intended to be humorous.

    Title: Tailor Made
    Arc ID: 258291
    Creator’s Global Name: @anachrodragon
    Mission Count: 2
    Notes – Designed for villains in the 20s or high teens (will AutoSK to 20). Intended to work both solo and teamed. There are only a couple objectives in the large second mission, but lots of optional stuff to smash, so it can be either quick or long depending on your own pace.


    Title: Poi, Demonology, and Everything I Learned From Hellions
    Arc ID: 164235
    Creator’s Global Name: @londerwost
    Mission Count: 2
    Notes – Designed for brand new heroes. This was play tested on a level 2 fresh out of Outbreak. It's intended to be something simple and fun for lowbies to get their feet wet with. Also, the second mission was supposed to be on a 45 minute timer, but timed hostage missions are bugged in I15, so it's untimed for now. (Make sure you read the "still busy" text)
  20. Added my new review thread:

    <ul type="square">[*]airhead (editorial of arcs with fewer plays)[*]Altoholic_Monkey -- Indies (1 mission) | Sequels (2-3 missions) | Epics (4-5 missions)[*]anachrodragon &amp; londerwost (lowbie arcs only, read first post, QPQ appreciated but not required)[*]Beach_Lifeguard[*]Bubbawheat | (In Character) [*]DeviousMe (QPQ) (no longer accepting submissions)[*]Dragonslay[*]Frozen_Northman (QPQ)[*]Glazius (read first post for conditions)[*]HolyEvilAoD (no longer accepting submissions)[*]Jophiel[*]Lazarus -- New (Semi-QPQ), Old[*]LaserJesus -- Old, New[*]Misho[*]Parkin (read first post for conditions)[*]Peacemoon (QPQ)[*]PoliceWoman (QPQ) | Reviews of arcs written by other Reviewers[*]ridiculous_girl (QPQ)[*]SteelSky[*]Stomphoof (QPQ)[*]Talen_Lee[*]TerminusEst13 (Focuses on BAD arcs)[*]theHedoren (QPQ)[*]Venture[*]Wrong Number (Humor Arcs, QPQ)[/list]
    EU reviewers
    <ul type="square">[*]Col.Blitzkrieger (no longer accepting submissions)[*]Leese[*]Master_Zaprobo (In character)[/list]
    Review sites
    <ul type="square">[*]City of Guides - Mission Architect[*]CoH Mission Review[*]Mission Architect Advanced Search Site[/list]
    Note: QPQ = quid pro quo: Play and rate/give feedback to the reviewer first in order to get a review on your arc, some are more lenient on this than others. Also, tends to have a shorter queue.

    Also, some non-QPQ have more than one reviewer with some not accepting new submissions, check the most recent page for up-to-date information.

    Semi-QPQ means that the reviewer only requires it for longer, in depth reviews and not for short, quick reviews.
  21. [ QUOTE ]
    Yes, it is meant for 20ish lowbies. Like I stated in my post and on the page.


    [/ QUOTE ]

    We originally tried it on some mid teen level characters, which admittedly are lower than 20, but in practice shouldn't play much differently from a level 20 character, when you consider that a 20 character has spent a lot of their powers on Fitness and Travel. Londer and I also have a lot of vet reward attacks, so that tends to skew our lowbies a tad more powerful for their level. Also remember, level 20 characters don't have SOs yet, and at DO levels of slotting we found we just weren't doing enough damage to the mobs. In any case, that's not something we held against you in any way, but it's maybe something to playtest a bit more. We switched to level 30ish characters because we wanted to try out the arc, and we were fine with that.

    [ QUOTE ]

    Hmmm, ok. I guess I assumed most people had played through the Faultline arcs and knew who Castillo was. After looking at it I realized it would be really, really confusing if you don't know he's a higher-up in the Sky Raider food chain. I fixed some text to relay this information.

    I think the mission popup which explains the 'search the first base' confusion had its lines cut. Thanks for the heads up on that.

    The clue says Durray is Castillos boss. This is why he has contact information.

    As for manticore, the allies you pick up in the Castillo mission say they are there on Manticore's orders.

    I used paragonwiki for all of my lore information. Am I missing something?

    [/ QUOTE ]

    I think we're maybe a tad less familiar with Castillo, because we don't spend a whole lot of time in Faultline. I can't even remember the last time we ran the Faultline content, it must have been years ago. We usually level our characters through the teen levels by running TFs with our SG. In any case, more description and/or clues about Castillo would be welcome.

    I think what hit me the wrong way about Castillo/Duray was that "never met him" seems to imply sort of an air of mystery, but having all his contact information seems to imply familiarity. If Castillo is familiar with Duray then it's not necessary to emphasize that he's never met him. Especially in this digital age, it's actually pretty common to have relationships with people you've never met, but I usually don't see the "never met" part being emphasized. For example, at my job I have coworkers in the UK. I talk to them and email them regularly. It's sort of irrelevant that I've never met them in person.

    On Manticore, we actually skipped the optional allies in the Castillo mission, so we didn't see their text. I'm sure this contributed to the surprise of finding Manticore in the last mission. Still, I kind of got the impression that Manticore was there to steal the show, and provide sort of a dues ex machina ending that my character never asked for. It also didn't help that he called my character a "fool." So I found myself both surprised and annoyed at his presence.

    SPOILER BELOW












    Sorry, but Dark Watcher being a villain who is for some reason in league with Sky Raiders is just too much for me. Dark Watcher is a powerful dimension-hopping being who was one of the original founders of the Freedom Phalanx. His interests seem to tend towards Nemesis and the Shadow Shard, and I just cannot rationalize how or why he'd ally himself with Sky Raiders, who are really pretty minuscule in the grand scheme of things.

    Anyway, this is what I'd do with the story if it were me, and I'm not saying you should do any of this. It's just my personal taste, so feel free to dismiss it entirely.

    I would cut back on the "I hate my boss" stuff, and add more character and plot development into the contact's dialog. He doesn't like his boss, we get that, now tell me something that propels the story forward.

    If you're going to involve Wyvern, I would make some mentions of their involvement from the beginning, either from the contact, or via clues. I would also remove Manticore, he's too powerful for a lowbie arc, and allies of his stature tend to steal the show. Plus I think his presence skews the level range of the last mission. Instead, if you're going to use Wyvern allies, I would try to develop some lieutenant or boss characters over the course of the arc, so the player gets to know them a bit.

    I would also remove Dark Watcher as a villain, and instead the contact's boss could be some kind of middle management dweeb who's misappropriating cash. Hell, the boss could even be a completely misguided dude who idolizes Dark Watcher. If you went that route it would have to be developed of course, and again revealed through clues, but I think that's one way to resolve it without stepping on the toes of canon. It would also allow you to bring the level range of the missions closer to 20-30.

    Anyway, just some suggestions. Again feel free to dismiss them entirely if they don't work for you.

    Edit: I also want to add, if you do wind up making changes and want a re-review, we'll be happy to play it again.
  22. My thoughts on Wings of Deception, arc ID #101926

    The missions were short and the objectives were clear, and not cumbersome. I appreciate the playability of the missions. However, the contact, and in fact most of the story, was pretty ambiguous. I feel like the only thing I know about the contact is that he's a guy who doesn't like his boss, and that point was hammered home over and over again.

    I found Castillo's joke oriented dialog incredibly confusing. Actually I barely had any idea who Castillo was, and wish he'd been described in clues or contact dialog. But I was really wierded out by the fact that he was talking about his personal appearance, etc... I think I asked Londer "Is this a complete non sequiter, or did I miss something?" Also, Castillo has never met Duray, but yet has all kinds of personal details? He's got his address, phone number, email address... it seems like his relationship is pretty friendly really.

    I also felt the idea of a email address trace and the potentially booby trapped computer seemed a bit off. Plus the computers said "reticulating splines" on them, which I simply didn't get at all.

    Then when Manticore showed up, I was searching desperately through the previous clues to see if there was any hint or tip off as to his involvement. It really seemed out of the blue. I know he said that you'd helped his friend, but that was an optional objective to begin with (which we had skipped) and it really seemed like a very disjointed justification.

    As for the person responsible... I'm not going to spoiler it, but it seems like a major departure for a canon character an I just can't see how to rationalize it. It doesn't help when there are no clues explaining the connections. I literally did a double-take when the name appeared in the nav bar, and then went desparetly searching for clues to explain it again (finding none).

    I have to say, when we started this arc I was expecting to face Duray or maybe a corrupt Vanguard guy of your own invention. I wasn't expecting to get so confused about the involvement of canon heroes.

    Overall, playable mission maps, that were pretty well balanced for 30ish characters (not so much for lowbies), but the story is very confusing and touches canon in somewhat uncomfortable ways.

    Rating: 3 stars
  23. [ QUOTE ]
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    Check out my Halloween Night Arc:
    Arc Id #227436
    Arc Name: Halloween Night
    Faction: Neutral
    Difficulty: Middle level depending on what happens in it
    Levels:1-30
    Synopsis:
    On a dark and stormy Halloween night, you decided to knock on the door of that scary house down the street. How were you to know that a real witch lived there, and wouldn't be happy with you bothering her. Oh well, maybe some good candy will come of this. [HFMA]

    1 Mission. Lots of Trick and Treat items (Glowies)

    [/ QUOTE ]

    I didn't feel we could rate this one. There's either an issue with the objectives or it's bugged, and I wanted to give you a chance to sort it out. Basically, we looked for the dentist for about 20 minutes (I even made a target_custom_next macro for "dentist") and we never found him. Didn't see any dialog from him either. We eventually just decided to quit out and let you know.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Now that is weird... he was there last time I ran it.. As well as when one of my SG mates ran it.

    I'll check it out and Post if I found the issue.

    {edit}
    Hum he spawned for me a couple times I did it.

    His name shows up as "The Dentist" I'll fix the Nav bar to capitalize the The.

    Also the witches with him are doing a spell set that should light up where they are. Not sure what happened when you ran it.

    BTW he always tends to show up in the bowl somewhere from what I can tell

    {/edit}

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Alright, we played it again. I was on my 13 Arch/MM blaster and he was on his 12 Eng/Eng blaster. I realized that two blasters might not have been ideal as a good number of the custom witches had mez powers. Still it worked out alright.

    I want to say that I like the premise and the atmosphere. The variety of custom mobs was nice. I thought your contact dialog was pretty sparse though. I actually liked your "about the contact" section more than the the mission intro text. I think you could set the scene better, provide some motivation/background, and even be atmospheric in the intro text.

    The Dentist was a bit odd as a boss, he sort of appeared out of nowhere, without any clues leading up to him. I would try to integrate him with the story more. I do appreciate that you added an animation though. He was easy to find on our second run through.

    Also I thought the pirate elite bosses were kind of odd. At first I thought they must be a part of the story that I was missing. I think they must be more like random elite bosses, but that seems rather strange when the Dentist isn't an elite boss himself.

    Also little things:

    There was a custom mob called SteambrdPractitioner, which doesn't look good condensed like that.

    I think some of the mob text had emoticons in it, which sort of caught me off guard, and brook the immersion of the setting.

    I think there was a typo in the end mission text, "then" vs "than".

    Overall, it was a nice short mission and a very cool idea. The story just needs more development so it all fits together more cohesively.

    Rating: 3 Stars
  24. [ QUOTE ]

    Arc Name: Ctrl + Alt + Reset!
    Arc ID: #137561
    Level Range: 15-30
    Missions: 4, fairly small maps
    Description: Foreshadow didn't see this coming. He sent you to retrieve a temporal artifact and now you're stuck in a time loop and have to figure out how to stop it.

    [/ QUOTE ]

    Duoed on my Shield/Fire tank (now level 14 due to the arcs we've run) and his Eng/Eng Blaster. It was a good solid arc, and very well suited to lowbies. I have to admit I think you've got kind of an uphill challenge with a story like this because it's repetitive by its very nature, and that has a tendency toward boredom. I think you did pretty well with the small mission sizes, and varied things up as much as you could. I have to admit though that I stopped paying close attention to the contact's dialog pretty early on... until the very end when I paid closer attention to it again.

    Some things I noticed:

    The kill boss objectives seemed to be set on boss group instead of boss. This caused some confusion, because I was really expecting the clues on defeating the bosses themselves. For example, if you need to get the artifact from a single guy, it doesn't make sense to be required to kill his friends.

    I also noticed in the last bit of contact dialog, you seem to be referring to Time Shifter alternately by "it" and "he", making that a bit hard to follow.

    Overall, I liked it and it was well suited to our characters. It had a lot of detail, and the ending was pretty neat with some unexpected mobs. That being said, I'm not sure I want to fight more Wyvern in warehouse missions for a while. Basically I think it's very well put together, and very well executed, though it might be limited a bit by the nature of the plot.

    Rating: 5 Stars (I was really torn between 4 and 5, so I think this would really be around 4.5, but I decided to round up)
  25. [ QUOTE ]
    Check out my Halloween Night Arc:
    Arc Id #227436
    Arc Name: Halloween Night
    Faction: Neutral
    Difficulty: Middle level depending on what happens in it
    Levels:1-30
    Synopsis:
    On a dark and stormy Halloween night, you decided to knock on the door of that scary house down the street. How were you to know that a real witch lived there, and wouldn't be happy with you bothering her. Oh well, maybe some good candy will come of this. [HFMA]

    1 Mission. Lots of Trick and Treat items (Glowies)

    [/ QUOTE ]

    I didn't feel we could rate this one. There's either an issue with the objectives or it's bugged, and I wanted to give you a chance to sort it out. Basically, we looked for the dentist for about 20 minutes (I even made a target_custom_next macro for "dentist") and we never found him. Didn't see any dialog from him either. We eventually just decided to quit out and let you know.