Clave_Dark_5

I've got three different "bandaged/Egyptian"-style toons and that's a pretty good summation of the choices I made for them. Right now I think those are about as good as we can get.

What technical issues exactly? I'm curious (see below).

If this is part of the "violating canon" issue, then I plead guilty. It was done for chuckles, a crime I see as being a minor offense at worst, but I can see how it might rankle you.

That's going to be added, yep.

He was, to an extent. I have to keep myself entertained, after all. In addition, one thing that gets me about so many arcs and in-game stories are the very straightforward one-goal-at-a-time nature of the storylines; seems to me there's room for some semi-side tracks (plus I snuck in some "villains are so cool" text in there to help portray the desire to be a real villain).

I was working to hook the player(s) with a "what's gonna happen next?" in the last mission, but as it stands that hasn't worked out yet. Except in the case of the cake; reviewers who've faulted me for not explaining the pitcher haven't said anything about how I didn't explain the cake until the end. When I update I'll be working towards trying to keep more of the final mission "mysterious", becuase when it comes to seeing a villain (or anyone) enact their master plan, I think mystery makes it more entertaining to watch.

I'm glad the comedy did something for you! Being all about the sewers, the poo-jokes just sort of snuck in (although one of them will be taken out when I edit, for what that's worth).

You missed some text where it explains that you're calling them with a hot tip right before actually smashing it. That was the best way I could think to shoe-horn it in, a tad rough, yes.

I'll admit to not knowing tons about how they would speak and I'm open to revising their speech, although once again I'll plead "it was done for lulz"; feel free to make suggestions or point me somewhere that would help.

I believe I have it tagged "looking for feedback" right now, and that's because I only recently published it. I have a whole mess o' changes to make but I'm currently waiting out the Player Voting Awards before I do that as it only seems fair.

Thanks for playing and for taking the time to provide some real feedback!

Actually this is one of the big reasons I don't PvP. I've learned how to play this game, but PvP is a totally different beast from what I've seen and I don't really have any interest to relearn the game for that. Also apparently I have no toons that fits the suggested power sets for ATs. :P

Otherwise, I think OP did a good job of trying to suggest and inform.

Oh, don't kid yourself! They will play through it within 24 hours and then complain that it was dull/bad and there's there wasn't enough of it.

You know this to be true...

I dunno... after building up a full bar of debt (practically unheard of for any of my toons) it gets old. Part of my problem with those orange vampires was the freakin' holds they open up with and the fact I normally don't rely on Inspirations to save my bacon. Having gone and just about filled my tray with Break-Frees, it's not so bad, but still... it's a noticable "challenge" compared to toons over say 20.

OMG I wish I could have been there to see that!

I do have plans for updating the arc as I only recently published it and have been getting some thoughtful feedback on it (and because apparently some of the grammar/spelling changes I've made didn't save, grrr), but I'm holding off on doing so until this awards thing is done (the real reason may have more to do with procrastination from having too much fun with the Halloween event, but you'll never get me to admit to that).

I've already grabbed Pistol Packin' Panda.

Then I started thinking about that AoE/gun-fu silliness move and now I'm working on a Yosemite Sam idea... that seems like a very Yosemite Sam kind of attack. Even with Panda, I have a feeling I'm going to make a YEE-HAAAAWWWWW! emote and click it every time I use that attack.

I've been meaning to give that arc a run-thru with my MM Rattus Rex, since his name's in Latin. Don't get me wrong, I don't know Latin, I just looked up "rat" in the dictionary and swapped in a "rex", but it would seem fitting somehow for him to run through it.

I kind of agree with you there, but what always kills me is when you see some really awful stuff win (NOT talking about these awards, I don't think I've played any of them so far, just the Oscars and stuff). There's some sort of hope dashed when some amazingly great project gets ignored...

I came away from it feeling that way too during my testing and it's been nagging me a little ever since. I've covered this before with MisterCaptainMan in his revue thread as well. I tried to keep the earlier missions from being ridiculously long for low level toons, as any mission can often be, because of the END loss a series of battles always seems to bring on. This is why I scattered so many glowies about in the first two missions, to fill up spawn points. Seeing as how you're now the second player to mention this, it's clear I need to go back and free up some of those spawn points to help give out more XP; we'll just have to get used to taking a knee more often as a low level toon anyways.

Well spit, some of my fixes obviously didn't save then - thanks for alerting me to these (for the record, I tend to cut and paste every block of dialogue from my missions into an online spellchecker). I can't recall the speech, but I'm guessing Fat's "come through here" is him being slangy, but I'll check up on it. Again, thanks for letting me know about these.

I'm not an expert on the ClockWork so I'm not as up on their mode of speech as I could be, so what I put in was more for ha-ha than serious canon-ness, yeah. Not to blow off your concerns but unless I come across some info telling me this seriously conflicts with the ClockWork's in-game nature, I'll probably leave it as-is, sort of WAI...

You may be right on this one. Fats makes the joke originally and is sort of insulted for it, so it seems a little odd to preserve it in the nav-bar doesn't it? Good catch there. I'll keep Fats' joke about it but change the nav-bar; if I can't think up something chuckle-worthy, no big deal.

ARGH! Will no one rid me of this troublesome issue?! You're the second person to have a problem with this. The first time I just sort of thought well, one guy, that's not that big a deal... I now see that if I don't put in a hint/clue about that door, it's going to haunt me forever - consider it the first thing I change! I'll also look into making the bomb bigger, which would make sense anyway with you wanting to blow up Fat's house/office and the big tank outside.

No, that's a good catch too. I recall editing that speech one word here, one word there... another word three days later... and I obviously missed the forest for the trees on that one. It's on my list for updating now too.
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Thanks for the high marks! I'm really glad to see this arc doing as well as it has so far as out of my three I think it's the one I feel the most invested in (not that the others were cheap knock-offs or throw-aways, mind you). Again, thanks for the great advice and finally, thanks for playing my arc, period.

My schedule to getting back to this arc for updating has been thrown off a little by the Halloween event (so many toons needing another costume slot, so little time) but now I have a pretty full list of things to get to - knowing these errors and problems are sitting out there while people play this arc and could be thinking man, this Clave Dark 5 guy sure makes some sloppy arcs drives the perfectionist in me nuts!

I was looking for something that would probably require at least a duo, but I think I might not be so picky at this point (see below), as this the focus of this arc is more the concept/story rather than a MEUBERBOSSIKICKU! sort of button-clicking fest. So Now I'm thinking around "soloable, but not easily soloable". Then again, are the ultra-tough boss arcs popular with teams? Would people who want to pit themselves against a real force of nature like that be all that interested to read the text?

Ok, sounds like solid advice there, thanks.

I was thinking to make the arc a two- or three- missioner, so you'd be facing the minions a fair amount most likely. Again, more good advice there. From my limited experience with BUs etc, I tend to agree with you on that.

Taking that into consideration alters the story a tad, but it's nothing I can't work around, so I may leave the ally out then.

My concept is something of a re-envisioning/alternate universe of the Clockwork (minions) and the ClockWork King (the AV or EB or whatever). I've only ever fought him once but I recall he was pretty kick-butt, which I seem to recall was due to psi powers. I've been thinking I might even shift from psi to something else ("some form of magic") to avoid that set to keep my version from being too uber, unless that could still work out. And yeah, it would be pretty much a mission or two that lead up to the big fight to stop the AV sort of thing.

So at this point I was thinking to myself "yeah, maybe he doesn't have to be all that uber because my arc would be more about the story than the fight-fest", so you've already got me thinking in a more focused manner here. Still, I'm not adverse to trying to create an arc both fun to read and challenging-fun to fight.

I wasn't planning to make the ally an EB-level, sorry I wasn't more clear on that, but it does bring up the question about what level they should be set at. Thanks for the advice.

He's not the one who should be apologizing, but anyway that made me laugh. I think I've heard him apologize for it more than once, too!

I was wondering that too. Maybe Nemesis scooped up everyone who attended and wiped their memories (or - worse yet - replaced them with fake memories).

Bah, bring 'em on! My 12th level scrapper in this SG is ready!!

I'm discovering this to be true with a Mind/NRG Dom I made a couple of weeks ago. When I do get around to playing him (darn this altitis!), I'm finding him a real breeze to play and level up. The newly added damage buff is pretty cool.

To answer the question posed above, I would have to say Doms and Stalkers as well. I do see the Stalkers around, but not in much numbers. Doms though still seem pretty thin.

I'm betting you did see it and forgot, because your offered explanation is pretty close. I put it in their bios to save some space in the mission send-off, sort of an after-the-fact bit of briefing from Fats. I'll make a note to revisit this and see if I can't make it fit in the real briefing (and if I can think up something else for the bios other than "Did that pile of guano just move?!").


This was an intentional story device, although not as fully executed as I wanted. I wanted the "grand plan" to be sort of a mystery, to function as a hook for the second half of the story. So many missions are "go here, do this" and then "you go there and do that" - you already know what's going to happen. So this was my way of monkeying around with that.

But just telling the players "go in and follow your nav box" would have too blind an alley to send them down, so I unfortunately end up giving away too much in the mission send-off for that last mission, which sort of leaves the urn hung out to dry in comparison to the other objectives. I'm looking to revisit the arc and try some rewriting to fix this so that more of the final mission tasks give an ah-ha pay-off; obviously some balancing to achieve this effect is needed.

Does that make sense? I hope so. :P I don't suppose fixing that would help with you not liking your toon "knowing something you don't" though.

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback again and thanks for giving it a whirl.

That "rare ghost" thing last year was just a bug, not a WAI effect. The devs only found out about it when we did (when the event went live) and announced that they were probably not going to be able to fix it in time for the rest of the event last year (and they didn't manage to).

Ok, thanks for clearing that up for me.

I'm still going to give this thing a pass though - meaning not go out of my way for it, my play time is too limited. Since the event's been live I've only seen it go down a total of three times and the map bugs I've been getting haven't been helping me feel excited about it, although I don't fault it for those, really. The funniest part of this I've seen: when the big bad turned up he apparently died awfully quickly (certainly before I knew what was going on or where) and someone broadcast "You griefing #&%@*s, stop killing him so quickly!" (no idea how tongue in cheek that was...)

I know it's not rocket surgery, but all the hoops to jump through for it (find an event taking place, rush to the zone, get a team going, direct them how to fight the banners [so is it spread out or not?], then rush to where the guy materializes in time to get the badge before he gets offed since it's locational) don't make it sound like fun.

I'm not crying DOOOOM or anything - please, enjoy yourselves! - just saying it's not what I'm after.