Zamuel

Nice to see Destructables get tweaks but I was really hoping for fixes to Defendables.

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There is a much easier fix. Remove inspirations from pvp zones. This would slow down farming without hurting the casual pvper.

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The sale of inspirations or the use of inspirations?

I also thought of another option but I'd really rather not say it out loud due to a few inherant problems with it.

Despite (or perhaps because of) my numerous deaths I enjoyed this.

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It's easy to make yourself into an AV, pit Ghost Widow as your hostage, and talk about how she loves you so much and would die for you...

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With the irony being that she's already dead...

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Would you allow for points to be earned for destroying objects or preventing their destruction in some way?

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Makes sense. However, it might be best to make the money worth a large amount and destruction worth less since it's probably easier to run rampant destroying things without getting caught/stopped as opposed to directly holding onto the money.

While I prefer mayhems over safeguards, you might want some form of pre-match side swap option so that people who want to play one side can be on the one they want. It' easy enough to justify storywise since heroes may be trying to test a bank's defenses as if they were bad guys while villains may be trying to figure out holes in the police's defense by pretending to be the police.

A well ordered league system will really help this since those who are heavily into it will be able to go against the best while those who are new will be able to match up other beginners.

I actually did an revenge arc, Illpracticed Malpractice. Due to that I know who you should add to your list--Doctors. Redside the (non PVP zone) med staff talks a lot of trash so they would be prime targets for a beating.

I wound up outleveling Veluta Lunata's arcs before I was able to start the second half. However, the GhostSlaying gun & grenades are still available to me. If I don't waste the charges, will they still work when I eventually get high enough to use Ouroboros? Also, do the weapons scale at all? As in, if I fight a ghost enemy at a higher level will it be similary effective as it is now or will it only work with enemies that are lvl 9-15?

Thanks for the in-depth feedback. I'll try to note a few things.

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Mission 1
Briefing: The contact is the daughter of the restaurant owner, and she wants me to go rescue her dad. This immediately reminds me of Penelope Yin's story, but in fairness, I'm sure there are lots of store owning dads who need rescuing.

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I'm new and hadn't done that story but I guess in ways it couldn't be avoided.

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The "casino" map seems an odd choice, but the contact did say that her dad was being held in "the casino hosting the restaurant". The map seems full of hostile "KCCC Employees", but I have no idea what KCCC is. The "info" on the minions doesn't tell me anything either; maybe would be a good place to put some explanation of who the KCCC are.

"Refridgerater" should be "Refrigerator".

After encountering some more KCCC Employees, their appearance and names make me think they must work for a villainous fast food restaurant.

Rescuing Mr Rider completed the mission; didn't seem to be a whole lot to this mission. I like the mission exit popup, though, with all its cheesy food preparation references.

Debriefing seems much too short. The "thank you" is nice, but it would be nice to have more info on what happened, who the KCCC are, why they kidnapped Mr Rider, etc.

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The casino map is a sore point since it is the only way to get a restaurant in any form in the MA. I forcibly had the casino mentioned as a handwave for the lack of a standard restaurant/fast food place. I just recently discovered that the Longbow Officer casino also has a restaurant area and I think it's a little better laid out for my purposes. I'll have to test it out. The small size of the Lucky Six actually prevented any other objectives (except a boss that spawns right in front of the door...) so I might try to add an innocent bystander.

As far as "KCCC", King Colonel's Chicken & Cake is actually mentioned in the first clue that is received as soon as you rescue Mr Rider. It might be good to mention it in some of the employee bios but I'll have to make it flow a little better. Will probably expand the debriefing though.

"Refridgerater" was misspelled on purpose but I see it's a bad idea. At least one other person mentioned this misspelling to me so I'm entirely to blame for not heeding it. Got an idea for a better name that still retains the "er" suffix though I will fix my other typos.

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Mission 2
Briefing: "Disasta Recipe" is mentioned as a villain here, but has not been mentioned before; the briefing should perhaps introduce her more fully, and explain a little about who this person is.

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I'll have to find the right way to do this. Tira really doesn't want to admit that it's her own family members doing this.

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Mission title "Defeat Disasta Recipe" is exactly the same as the objective, "Defeat Disasta Recipe". You might rename the mission title to "Save the warehouse" or something, just to avoid repetition.

Map selection: I'm supposedly going to a food supplier warehouse, but the map appears to be the rave dance hall. While this is technically a warehouse, it doesn't look right for a place that would presumably be supplying the rib restaurant.

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Adding more to the warehouse will help it a lot. There's one really specific empty spot on the map that fits a spot for a rescue. I felt that the second mission was missing something but I couldn't place my finger on just what it needed. For reference, the last mission was originally on a different map and only had the boss fight against King Colonel with Tyrone Rider only mentioned in the debriefing so this has certainly been a work in progress that has improved vastly with people's feedback.

The map choice was originally going off the thought process of the enemies partying when they take over the warehouse but that concept sort of fell by the wayside. Plus this map and the map I originally chose for the third mission were done for an ill conceived coolness factor.

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[NPC] Disasta Recipe: I can't fail my father. I just can't!

Am I supposed to know who her father is? Is it supposed to be King Colonel? It's not mentioned in her info - I had the impression she's just another employee of KCCC.

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That was also supposed to be subtly tying into the family rivalry aspect of the story. I was trying to expressly keep some of the details hidden and slowly reveal them over time.

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The contact mentioned destroying any "strange food containers" in this mission, but I didn't see any. Also, she said that this is a supplier taken over by Disasta Recipe; why aren't there any employees of this supplier around? Maybe should be a few hostages to rescue, objects to destroy or glowies to click. As it is, all I had to do was defeat Disasta Recipe's group to complete the mission.

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It was actually a destructable instead of a glowy. May switch it so it is more obvious. I'll add a few warehouse workers after I find which warehouse map mirrors the layout.

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Inside the mission, I link up with Tira Rider (the contact). She's a minion two levels lower than me...eep. Not sure I can keep her alive; fortunately, it's not a requirement. On the bright side, she won't be stealing the glory.

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Yeah did that on purpose. Wanted her to show up for story reasons but didn't want her to overshadow the player or become too much of a liability. It's pretty rare for her to last past the boss fight but it makes sense storywise since she's not really a full superhero.

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Fighting more of the KCCC Employees with fire and ice powers, I am struck by how much they remind me of Outcasts. You might consider having as part of your back story that King Colonel's employees are mostly former Outcast gang members; maybe adjusting their costumes to match. Up to you; I think it would be cool to tie them closer to an existing CoH faction though.

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I'll have to research it a bit to see how well it fits as far as the backstory is concerned. I'm sticking with the outfits since not so subtle color coding allows the player to get an idea of what order to attack the enemies and can easily do it on the fly.

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Consider giving the Cleaver mob the Hatchet, Impervium Axe or Roman Axe A as weapon? I think one of those would look more like a meat cleaver than the Lumberjack's Axe she's currently using.

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Fair enough. I'll have to experiment a bit.

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I like the little crown you gave King Colonel. In his description, "A violent chef who's mere touch" should be "A violent chef whose mere touch". I am not quite sure why he thinks kidnapping Mr Rider will actually make people eat at King Colonel's Chicken and Cake; the story has previously established that KCCC was shut down because of health code violations (due to his radiation powers), not due to competition with the Rib Shack. So taking out the competition wouldn't really help.

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I may have to slightly tweak the wording there. Due to his jealousy there's a certain aspect of "If I can't be successful then you can't either!" to King Colonel's thought process. He is supposed to be mildly delerious so I may need to add that to his bio.

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Thinking about it, "Mr Rider" may not be the right thing to call Tyrone Rider. Since King Colonel is Tyrone Rider's brother, he could just as easily be called Mr Rider, too.

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Quite perceptive, was waiting on that. You're either the first to notice that or the first to say it out loud. I might interchange "Tyrone Rider" and "Mr Rider" in parts since the "Mr" portion is supposed to be a sign of respect as opposed to calling him by his first name. Plus you don't know about King Colonel until later in the story.

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[NPC] King Colonel: Don't think you've won, Mega. Employees, a raise to whoever takes this pathetic Brute down!

Nice dying message. I'm quite surprised this dialog didn't trigger an ambush, though; it really sounds like it should.

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I had to cut a true ambush due to way they spawn when there's multiple floors to the map. Even when set to Front, they spawn on the same floor and head straight for you without any chance for you to react. This is what spawns Disasta and I might be able to play with patrols if MA doesn't act stupid.

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I like that Disasta Recipe spawns in the path back to the door, but she really didn't have much to say except

[NPC] Disasta Recipe: So long suckers!

...which sounds like a running-away message. I think she needs more dialog. Maybe she could be mad about how you defeated her dad, or say something about how awesome KC Chicken and Cakes are.

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The running is in reference to not wanting to go to prison again (I'm guessing your Brute's aggro prevented her from actually running like she's scripted to) but after thinking it over it does seem a little out of character since she is fiercely loyal to her father.

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Overall
I like the set up of the final mission, where you beat up King Colonel, causing Tyrone Rider to appear, and then you need to lead Tyrone Rider out of the mission with Disasta Recipe blocking the way. I thought the first two missions were a little too simplistic though (rescue 1 hostage, defeat 1 boss) and needed to have more details of interest in them.

For a mission about the Ribs Restaurant, I thought there was a shocking lack of ribs, or food of any sort, within the missions. I'd suggest adding lots more references to the yummy ribs and the awful chicken & cake, to help better establish the setting for your story arc. Maybe there should be non-required glowies in mission 1 giving a "Yummy Barbecued Ribs" clue, and non-required glowies in misson 3 giving "Radioactive Fried Chicken" and "Radioactive Cupcake" clues.

You might also add a few restaurant patrons as hostages in mission 1, and warehouse workers as hostages in mission 2.

I like the rivalry that is set up between KCCC and the Rib Restaurant, but I think the player needs to learn what the KCCC is much earlier, like in mission 1 where you first start encountering KCCC employees. Perhaps you could add to their background info, or add patrols with dialog that expositions about how King Colonel is going to be reopening his restaurant soon.

Also, King Colonel repeatedly kidnapping Tyrone Rider actually doesn't seem like it helps his restaurant business; especially since the KCCC restaurant was apparently shut down due to reasons unrelated to Rider's Ribs Restaurant. I like the rivalry between the two restaurants, but the motivation for the kidnapping needs some work.

Anyway, with all that in mind, I gave this story arc 3 stars. Hope you think that is fair!

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This is the most in depth critique I have gotten so far and it will go a long way to improving the arc. It's been in a constant state of upgrade and transition since I originally turned it in for my final exam in May. The adding of a true Tyrone Rider escort + Disasta to the third mission really added more depth and most certainly helped my grade. Some of these fixes will be faster than others but I'll be working on this so I can add it back to the review list (if that's okay). In fact, considering the issues with that first clue, I'm wondering if you could possibly re-run the very first mission of the arc since it's short enough to look at that clue without too much effort. I'll make a point of not changing the first map yet so it can be completed faster and I did try to deliberately mention KCCC's true name early on. Then again, with how late it is I shouldn't be trying to change anything right now but still...

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3. Don't Touch the Peons: The big boss summons low-level flunkies who con gray to the players and have weak attacks. However, each flunky can heal the boss for decent chunk of HP, and once they're defeated, the boss summons a new set. The trick is to leave [u]one[u] peon alive and beat down the big guy or gal.

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Quite interesting. Seems like a solid way to allow single target specialists to shine since AOEs will have a high chance of killing the minions thus causing more to get summoned.

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Wouldnt single target attacks already outperform aoe attacks against a single enemy(boss)?

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Such common sense is lost on some teams...

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3. Don't Touch the Peons: The big boss summons low-level flunkies who con gray to the players and have weak attacks. However, each flunky can heal the boss for decent chunk of HP, and once they're defeated, the boss summons a new set. The trick is to leave [u]one[u] peon alive and beat down the big guy or gal.

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Quite interesting. Seems like a solid way to allow single target specialists to shine since AOEs will have a high chance of killing the minions thus causing more to get summoned.

My latest arc was part of a self imposed challenge to attempt to make an interesting arc with just one mission. If your villain is tired of the staff in the Rogue Isle's hospital talking trash, this is for you.

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Arc Name: Illpracticed Malpractice
Arc ID: 246459
Faction: Villainous
Creator Global: @Zamuel
Synopsis: Fed up with the audacity of the medics in the Rogue Isles, a law firm hires you to kidnap the Chief Resident so that he can't escape being sued for the shoddy treatment in the hospital.

Feedback gladly appreciated.

I try to be extra careful with my Stalker and Doms since I'm a newer player and while the people I've teamed with have been cool, I know they have a bad rep. I probably cringe more than they do if I see a team mate killed since I'm always worried about whether or not it was my fault.

First off, *looks at avatar*, wow someone knows Shantae exists

Back on topic, something that would help without even having branching paths would be new unique skills for enemies. Let's take Reichman for example. I'm too low a level to fight him but it seems like reports have him as a sort of standard big boss who hits hard. Lowering his HP but giving him a new attack would make the fight more interesting by forcing the players to adapt (if the attack were innovative enough).

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The Casino tileset would make a great Restaurant too with some minor alterations.

Just rip out the craps tables and slot machines and put in some dining tables, switch out the bright lights for something more subdued, change out the cashier cages for a salad bar and put a kitchen in that poker room and voila!

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That said, I'm using one of the casino maps in my arc since it has a small restauraunt area (very small but beggars can't be choosy).

Made edits to mine *points at sig*

A restaurant would be nice since there's already a ton of fast food places where this could easily be used for radios/newspapers. The others are obviously good too.

Kiosks would be good since it would be a nice benefit for those who like Arena PvP and on the flip side it wouldn't benefit anyone who is cheating the badges solely for the sake of the badges themselves and will never do anything PvP afterwards.

While I haven't had much PvP experience, Sudden Death can be inherantly bad in a competitive situation, especially when forced. I'm surprised that there isn't a limited lives option and this would really help some situations. If sudden death has to stay, it might be best if the amount of HP is scaled up a tad so that DOTs aren't problematic.

Since the Mission Accolade power allows you to edit your arc from anywhere, perhaps there needs to be an update to the already existing Mission Computer to allow it to act like a Data Stream + Contact Hologram

I'm interested but may not have time to participate.

If anything is within range then it will only use those enemies and it will negate the scaling feature.

I experimented with the MA and Dom changes on Test so I like those. SF sounds interesting but I'm too low to participate. TF sounds...off. Vines is an underwhelming pattern but I know I can put it to use. Likewise, I'll stick a few of the new faces in an arc for the heck of it. I like Ulterior.

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Now if you were, as i mentioned earlier, to have tub ci suddenly start accepting work with other existing groups and not just driving them out of paragon and building his own empire, then i would be fine with it.

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Then perhaps it would be better to create a rival gang specifically for the purpose of fitting in these other designs and to actually have some of the enemies the Tsoo have run out.

To my understanding, there's a new option to force your arc to a specified level with appropriate forced scaling of the enemies in range.

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Has all the oldschool DC heroes in it. (The Flash, Green Lantern...

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You might want to be specific on the versions of the Flash and Green Lantern that are used since they are quite different than the current Justice League. Anyways, due to copyright/EULA reasons you can't directly have a JSA homage arc but done right you could match the overall feel.

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so i dunno, one thing i would like and have suggested in the past was a anime/manga themed zone, accessed by oroboros which takes you to a future version of japan where environmental and economic situations have brought in large numbers of korean and japanese residents (as a justification to get in chinese and korean mythological creatures and costume bits) you deal with both high tech ghost in the shell styled criminals as well as having supernaturally controlled areas where you fight various yokai(japanese ghost-monsters, basicly) and chinese monsters.

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While I can't see a full on futuristic anime zone in Paragon or the Rogue Isles, I could see them expanding upon the Tsoo to possibly pick up a few of these archetypes. Reading ParagonWiki's reprint of the CoH file/bio on the Tsoo it mentions some being interested in the latest fashions and it does mention women participating during their blood sports so adding a few female enemies and adding a few "modern" enemies wouldn't break the canon.