Coulomb2

Okay, I promised I would post a request for a review of an arc that I was likely to (at least at some point) actually use the feedback to make tweaks to the arc. So here goes!

The arc is "The Blue Devils" (Arc ID#468738)

*Crosses fingers*

It's not exactly "April Fools" style, but Freakshow U (my sig) is at least comedic.

Sorry it took a while to respond to this, but I can add to your information here...

I can't really track ticket counts (my wife actually hosts my 'better' arcs on her account since he had no interest in AE herself) - at least not very easily. But my one Dev's Choice arc is nowhere near 1,000 plays, so I can give an exact number of (new, unique) plays over the past 16 days.

On March 2nd, Purification was at 486 plays.
Today (March 18th), it's at 493 plays.

So a total of 7 new plays over 16 days. Roughly speaking, that's about 3-4 plays a week, and about one play every other day on average.

Purification is (and has been) near the bottom of page 1 since it got DC'd, and I *believe* that rate of play has been pretty consistent for almost a year.

(Interesting to note that at that rate, Purification will hit 1000 plays in 3 years and 2 months, so about May of 2014.)

(My other two 'popular' arcs are The Lazarus Project, and Learning the Ropes. The former got no plays over the last two weeks, and the latter 6 plays. So, on the almost unbelievable chance they'll somehow remain 5 stars until they hit 1,000 plays, at the current rate Learning the Ropes will achieve Hall of Fame in April of 2015, and the Lazarus Project will reach Hall of Fame some time after the heat death of the universe.)

I'm having some trouble deciphering your questions, but I'll try to answer what I can.

1. Only the very first 'ally' (or escort or rescue) you 'free' will actually use buffs on you (including heals). That change was implemented to shut down farms that used small armies of AV-level buff-bots to put even a squishy character in god-mode for quick and easy map clearing. That *might* be what's causing you a problem (since if you're noticing your heal-bot is not healing your 'ally', that implies you might have gotten that ally first, which would cause your healer to not use their buffing abilities.)

2. This is a matter of opinion, and even of characters. I can solo my incarnate Brute set for 8 people with little effort. But I rarely have my fire scrapper set to more than x2. My advice (which is, of course, only my opinion) is to always design an arc to be balanced for a player at x1, but, that said, *always* make sure that your custom groups are designed in a way so that if you've got mobs with significant buffing or debuffing powers, that they are relatively rare spawns (the best way to accomplish this is to make sure the minion and lt. ranks have several 'non-buffing (or debuffing)' mobs for every one with buffing abilities. For example, if you have five types of minions and four types of lts., but only one type in each category has buffing or debuffing abilities, then if a player's settings cause 5 minions and 2 lts. to spawn (as an example), on *average* only 1 of the minions will have buffing/debuffing abilities, and a 'buffing' lt. will only spawn about every other spawn. (Again, that's 'on average' - you'll certainly get some spawns with no buffers, and others with a painfully large number of them). Compare that to every minion and every lt. having buffing powers, and now you're consistently producing spawns were *everything* can (and will) buff everything else in the spawn (and/or debuff you into oblivion).

3. Huh?

4. Click that little book looking thing with the plus sign. That'll add a mission to your arc. At least I think that's what you're asking...

First, count me in with those that have stated if the situation was reversed, the proposed solution would not in any way bother me. My global ID (and my forum ID for that matter) is NOT my identity. They exist for the express purpose of giving other people in-game something to call me that *isn't* my actual identity.

That said, I do think that giving an active account precedence over an inactive one is the best solution, but, unfortunately I think several pages back the EU community was politely told that's just not in the cards.

But there is another solution that's technically the most even-handed of all:

1. Server merge occurs.
2. Check all EU accounts for name collisions with NA accounts.
3. If a name collision occurs, roll d100.
4. If result is <=50, the NA account is the one that gets renamed.
5. If result is >50, the EU account is the one that gets renamed.

That affects exactly as many people as the existing proposal. It will upset exactly as many people as the existing proposal too. But at least both communities will have equal amounts of upset floating around.

To be honest, though, although I think NCSoft's heart is in the right place, maybe the global server access thing is, in hindsight, not a good idea. I've seen several long time players flat out say they'd rather not gain access to the 11 NA servers than face the risk that their global will change. Maybe that's a sign that the EU community thought they wanted the servers merged, but they really don't. And if you really think about it, is it that huge of an advantage? It is very unlikely we're going to see a drastic increase in cross-continent teaming. For one, nearly all of my commonly played characters are on NA servers. I'm personally not going to be rushing to create characters that will dominate my play time on the EU servers, and it's probably fair to assume the EU players aren't going to be rushing to create characters that they'll be spending significant time playing on the NA servers. And even if I did suddenly decide to spend most of my time on an EU server, frankly, that server would probably seem even more deserted than the low population NA servers since most of the 'natives' would be asleep - or just waking up and getting ready for work - at the time I was on.

And now, the last in the second cycle of the Continuing Adventures of Pro Payne.

Once again, Pro Payne’s queue is open to anyone who would like a review; the first six who respond will get a slot in ‘cycle three.’ (See the original post for additional details/explanations.)

The Rise of the Immortal King (Arc ID#479013, 5 stars)

Quick Note: Originally, when the author first made the request, I assumed that this was a villainous arc (probably because he mentioned playing it with a Brute – just a case of me making a totally unfounded assumption). But it’s a heroic arc, and is therefore up Pro Payne’s alley. That also removes any chance I’ll be facing AVs; Perturbation is willing to attempt to solo AVs, but Pro Payne isn’t. (Not that that detracts from the arc…)

Well, it started off as a pleasant enough day – at least until some Old Farmer came running up to me in a panic. He was heading to Altas Park to sell some of his vittles, and all of a sudden, the place was overrun by aliens.

Oh, great, I though – not another Rikti Invasion. Well, time to be a hero.

The Old Farmer was convinced that if I could find and drive off the alien commanders, the rest of the invading horde would also retreat. Sounded like a sensible plan to me. I turned to thank the Farmer for his thoughtful advice, but he simply told me to scram and get to saving the city. Since lives were at stake, there was certainly no reason to argue.

On my way to Atlas, something strange did occur to me. I wasn’t entirely sure what vittles were, but they sounded like something you’d sell to a supermarket. Hmm … I don’t think I’d ever seen a supermarket in Atlas Park. Strange. But something to worry about some other time. There were aliens to repel!

Note: Upon entering the mission, the pop-up mentioned the Veluszhi by name; that was a little jarring since it implied that the farmer had called the aliens by name (which he didn’t).

Almost immediately upon arriving at Atlas, the weird factor was ramped up a few notches as I did battle with an invading lieutenant. The creature referred to me as an ‘Edenite’, and made some awfully strange statements about dressing up like animals. Not to mention some sort of statement about coming here for the bunnygirls. Huh?

In any case, I had three leaders to take down: Torchbearer Syn-fatuush, Frostkeeper Foth-ketan, and Captain Eidengar.

As I raced through Atlas Park looking for the three alien leaders, I also collected some additional intelligence on who exactly the invaders were, and what they were doing here. Evidently, the Veluszhi were a race of innate shapeshifters where nearly every member of their species has superpowers. Angered at being ‘overshadowed’ by other races, they had decided it was time to go on an expedition of conquest, and Earth was next on the list.

I also learned that their Chancellor had decided to accompany them on the ground invasion, and had now gone missing. That seemed like a pretty important little tidbit, since finding and capturing said Chancellor could help repel the invaders.

Notes: On the plus side, the arc already gives the impression of being well constructed, and the custom group is very well done. On the ‘down’ side (sort of), although I’ve got the basic plot down solid, my first impression in this first mission is *strange.* Although, on a basic level, the story seems to be a serious one, it was actually a little hard for me to tell if some of the strangeness was intended as humor, or if it was intended to make the aliens seem strange. See, “strange” here isn’t bad per-se: these guys are aliens, so it doesn’t bother me that they seem strange. But, at the moment, if there are attempts at humor, I’d say they’re getting lost in the strangeness…

The defeat of their leaders had the intended effect; the aliens retreated from Atlas, at least for now. The Old Farmer was very pleased to find out about this.

Oddly, said Farmer seemed to be my best source of information on what the aliens were up to – he informed me that they’d set up a ‘probing’ facility in Faultline (how the heck did he know that?!). Now, of course, when you think of aliens and ‘probes’ a very specific thing comes to mind – but, wherever the ‘probes’ went, once installed in a victim, they could mind control him, forcing him to become a new recruit in the Veluzshi army.

That seemed like a pretty clear next target – taking on the probing facility would at least keep the Veluzhi from drafting innocent civilians into their forces. (And, amusingly enough, when I entered the mission, the pop-up did poke fun at the fact that it did seem strange that the Old Farmer knew everything that he did.)

The alien base was set up in an abandoned lab. I needed to destroy the probe device, free any prisoners that had been captured, and defeat the Drill Sergeant who was leading the operation here.

The first two tasks were easy enough, but the last proved impossible – literally. After searching through the map at least three times, I simply couldn’t find the Drill Sergeant at all.

Note: I suspect this may be a case of objective overload; if you’re right at the limit of the number of objectives a map can take, sometimes a chained, but mission critical objective won’t spawn in, making the mission uncompleteable. Really, the only way to deal with this is to remove some of the ‘flavor’ objectives (especially things like that ambush, or some of the patrols) – or, alternately, don’t make the Drill Sergeant a chained objective; just have him spawn in right at the start.

All this assumes that the objective text for that glowy in the last room was ‘Defeat the Drill Sergeant’ and that’s what ‘Sarge’ was attached to (still with ‘Defeat the Drill Sergeant’ as his objective). The only other thing I can think of is this: I did notice one of your bosses had ninjitsu: just appeared out of nowhere. If the Drill Sergeant actually has ninjitsu and no ‘escort’ – and, for some reason, spawned outside somewhere, it’s possible I just never saw him. Very unlikely, but possible. (After the fact: As you’ll see when I replay the mission below, clearly Sarge didn’t have ninjitsu; he just failed to spawn.)

In any case, I was out of time for the day’s playing session, so I simply logged out – that’ll reset the mission for tomorrow, where I’ll give it another try.

Okay … 2nd attempt. Interestingly, I noticed a lot more patrol dialog this time around; mostly pretty amusing stuff. But… Minor Note: “Sounds like sarge ran outta medicine again…” “Oh, Christ. You know what? Just kill me now and get it over with.” Okay, very minor niggle … but it seems quite unrealistic that the footsoldiers of an alien empire would be using human-specific “swears.” Wouldn’t they say something like “Oh, Vid-Szhite” (or some other revered alien figure) instead?

Alright – this time the mission worked correctly. I found the Drill Sergeant at the very top of the lab complex. No idea how often this little bug rears its head. May have been a one-time fluke, or perhaps a few runs through the arc set to a team size of 2 or more could give you an idea as to how often the bug happens (and whether or not it warrants perhaps reducing somewhat the number of details in this mission).


Pro Payne delivers the final blow to Sarge, bravely ignoring the Veluzhi trooper taking aim as his six.

Interestingly, the Sarge actually appeared fully human, confirming the Veluzhi morphing ability was quite effective in allowing the invaders to blend in with their potential conquest. I also found a page from a Veluzhi ‘chronicle’ that had some interesting information in it. It would seem the current emperor of the Veluzhi was a prince Vid-Szhite, who had deposed (and murdered) the previous ruler (an Empress Quo-della). It appeared that the coup was at least in part retaliation for the murder of his father and mother. There could be no doubt those murders were political – Vid-Szhite’s mother was the former Empress’ sister. Note: I actually rather enjoyed the political backstory here; it was clear that two bloodlines had been interchanging rulership of the empire (Vid and Quo). Since Vid-Szhite was the son of both bloodlines, that could potentially give him a play at tremendous political power – although only if he was skilled enough to take advantage of said birthright. While not exactly the same (especially in terms of how he came to power), it actually reminded me a lot of Prince Victor Steiner-Davion in the detailed fiction that served as an underpinning to the BattleTech universe.

But what was odd was Vid-Szhite was already being criticized for not doing enough to further the expansion of the Veluzhi. Given than the Veluzhi were clearly expanding their empire with gusto, Vid-Szhite must have opted to return the empire to its expansionist roots some time after this chronicle was written.

Strange though it was, that Old Farmer was still my best source of information as to the latest activities of the invaders. So I returned to him to see if he had any ideas as to what to do next. He did: the aliens had simply left a landing shuttle unguarded in the suburbs of the city. He suggested that I ‘borrow’ the shuttle, fly it up to the alien (Veluzhi) mothership, and beat down one or two really powerful ‘warlords.’ He figured that would send a clear message to Veluzhi that it would be best to just move on, and leave Earth alone.

Note: I never did really figure out what the “WAFN SS-J” stood for… at least not at this point in the story.

After flying the shuttle up to the mothership, I headed out to defeat and destroy as many Veluzhi as I could find. The going was a bit slower, as the Veluzhi on the mothership were all “command staff” types (i.e. a totally new custom group) – but, honestly, there’s nothing a giant sword of flame can’t ultimately deal with. So after giving a rather large number of Veluzhi a “painful burning sensation” I found one of their *serious* higher-ups: WAFN SS-J “Nerdmaster” Fedt-geszhine. Oddly, he wasn’t intent on putting up a fight. He wasn’t a big fan of the current Emperor, and wanted me to help him. Apparently, I was willing, and needed to seek out the ‘real’ commander of the ship: Cyborg Commander Argus.


The custom groups actually make heavy use of the more high-tech looking Developer Designed robotic mobs. It works very well! (The extreme pixellation is caused by the fact my computer wigs out in Praetorian lab maps, forcing me to greatly turn down my 3D scaling to get a reasonable frame rate.)

I backtracked a bit, and found the cyborg commander. The robotic menace was all full of bluster and threats, but, with WAFN SS-J “Nerdmaster” Fedt-geshine’s help (hereafter known as “Fed”), I was able to defeat him.


Argus had some pretty vicious tricks up his sleeve, but, in the end, the forces of truth and justice prevailed!

Argus’s last words were a threat that I “would not be able to defeat the Emperor.” Apparently, that led me to think the Emperor was actually on the ship too (Note: Not *too* unreasonable, but, I think It’d be better if Argus dropped a clue that somehow gave me a story-related reason to know that the Emperor was here – as it stand, I simply defeat Argust, and suddenly know the Emperor is here as well, and needs to be defeated. That’s a bit jarring… without some sort of clue to advance the plot, the “feel” is that the mission should be over. Instead, I’m about to hunt down and fight the Emperor…)

While on my way to find the Emperor, Fed mentions that he’s more in favor of the ideas of some guy called “Old Rathie.” I don’t give it much thought, since it doesn’t take long to find Vid-Szhite. I’m feeling particularly inspired (as well as having plenty of ally support, given Fed’s a robotics mastermind), so I launch into combat with the Veluzhi emperor (whose description seems to include some sort of ‘metagame’ reference to how his two power sets are impossible to have combined in the ‘real’ game, which I find kind of odd).

True to form, Emperor Vid-szhite is a rather tough and wily foe. Only the fact I was feeling terribly inspired helped me triumph in the battle (and there were many close calls). But, in the end, the Emperor fell, pleasing Fed to no end.


You’d think this was me preventing the Rise of the Immortal King. Turns out, I’m actually *helping* the Immortal King’s ascension…

What came next was a statement from Fed that filled me with disproportionate worry; something I’m sure he’d given almost no thought to, but explained something that had been bothering me since this all began: why the heck a mere farmer was doing such a good job of giving me solid military *intelligence* (NOT just ‘advice’ – he seemed to *know* exactly what was going on, and where I needed to focus my efforts).

Fed told me to “say hi to Old Rathie.” A simple enough request on the surface – but, obviously, the Old Farmer was nothing of the sort. Suddenly, the Veluzhi’s ability to morph into a form matching the ‘target species’ brought me to a terrible realization: the Old Farmer was one of them – a *very powerful* one of them. And I’d just eliminated his greatest rival.

I didn’t know exactly what “Old Rathie’s” plan was – but I figured I was about to have to stop it.

I was wrong. “Rathie” made no attempt to hide from me – there was no effort needed to interrogate those loyal to his cause to find out more: he was merely waiting for me after my return, to tell me what was going on. “Rathie,” it turns out, was that Chancellor that had vanished in the early phase of the invasion. While wielding great political power of his own, the Chancellor of the Veluzhi Empire was still beholden to the will of the Emperor. He, quite literally, took advantage of the fact that nobody in the invading force considered him more than a nuisance in need of a babysitter to stage his ‘coup. By helping me repel the invaders, he’d directed me to kill their Emperor.

And now he had a deal for me. With the Emperor dead, Fed – who had the support of a major faction of the army – was making his own play for Emperor. Rathie offered to have the Empire’s forces retreat from Earth if I would defeat Fed, giving the Chancellor uncontested command of the Empire’s armed forces.

It was possible that Rathie’s complete lack of physical threat was what compelled me – he didn’t seem to have any powers beyond his political savvy. Or perhaps he was his world’s version of the Center – a master manipulator with a mutant ability to force his will upon others.

It didn’t matter – it was clear that either way, Fed needed to be taken down if the Earth was to be saved. I agreed to be the one to do the deed.

I fought my way through Fed’s forces – largely fun, challenging fights. Except the parts where I died. But I’ve got to admit, the fact that I only had a couple of face-plants at the very end of the arc told me that even though the custom group sometimes felt a bit overpowered, if I wasn’t really dying much, they actually were decently balanced.

It was actually the former Emperor Vid-Szhite that led me to Fed … I found him not too far away from where Rathie’s transport dropped me. The moment I rescued him, he told me where to find Fed. Note: Okay, that seems to be a rather large hole in the story. Why the heck is Vid-Szhite still alive? It seems to me that the progression of the story practically requires that he die in our previous encounter – after all, he *is* the Emperor, and if he isn’t, in fact, dead, then it seems neither Fed nor Rathie have a clear claim to power any more. After all, one would assume that a rather large fraction of the army was ‘probed’ from earlier campaigns (before they came to Earth), and would have a forced loyalty to the Emperor – a loyalty that could only be shifted to another member of the Empire if the Emperor was dead.

In my first encounter with the *******, *luck* was just not on my side. A trip to the hospital gave me a chance to invest in a whole lot more … luck.


Here we’ve got the Clash of the Nerds, Take 1. Sadly, Nerdmaster Fed’s Nerd-Fu was far greater than mine. But after a trip to the hospital (and a training montage set to ‘Eye of the Tiger’ that, thankfully, was omitted for brevity), I return and best the evil Fed.

And that was exactly what I needed. I defeated Fed, purged my Debt to the City, and returned to see what the Chancellor had to say.

He kept up his side of the bargain – Chancellor “Rathie” took control of the remaining invasion forces, and ordered the retreat.

Good enough for me!

Pros: As always, I’ve got feedback on things that I thought could be improved, but overall, I thought this was an excellent arc. One of my most common critiques is that the arc needs “polish” (my generic way of saying its needs some proofreading passes, perhaps a few adjustments to the story, tweaking of the custom characters, and some more flavor objectives to help draw you into the story). Well, here is an example of an arc that does *not* need polish – it is a well, put-together arc that has the feel of a lot of work having gone into it. Great use of clues, chained objectives (except for that one odd bug), flavor objectives. Excellent custom group overall. And I found the story to be pretty interesting. The twist with the farmer being the Chancellor was quite amusing: as you can tell from my commentary, I did notice a lot of oddness about the farmer, but it didn’t click as to who exactly he was practically until the story revealed it.

Cons: Well, if I’ve got to nitpick, I’ll start by summarizing my chief objections from the commentary: humor is a very subjective thing, and, for what it’s worth, I think some of the attempts at humor (if that’s what they were) fell flat early in the arc, especially in that first mission. It came off as “strange” or “awkward” more than funny. Granted, that might have also been the author’s intent, but I think it works better if you stick to one or the other. As it stands, it reads like the author’s trying to be funny, but it comes off as strange, as opposed to it being clear that the aliens are supposed to give you a very strange impression, with any humor that comes of that a complete coincidence.

Obviously, there was that bug in the second mission – it’s my sincere hope that was just a fluke. But it should be looked into: I know from personal experience random players tend to blame (and punish) the author for bugs that aren’t really their fault. You might not be able to completely eliminate it, but anything you can do to make it an extremely rare occurrence (or, alternately, plenty of testing to confirm it’s an extremely rare occurance) is a very good idea. In my experience, eliminating a few of the flavor objectives might help.

In mission three, the appearance of the Emperor is like a hiccup in the plot – according to the setup, I’m supposed to be dealing with two “bigwigs.” The problem is, one of them turns out to not want to fight me (Fed), leaving the other to be defeated (Argus). So, now I’d assume I’ve dealt with the two leaders the Farmer was referring to, and it’s time to deal a final blow to the Empire (i.e. hunt down and defeat the Emperor, assuming he’s even with the invaders; I’ve gotten no indication as to whether or not he’s on the ground, on this ship, or directing operations from their homeworld, or something). But, instead, I just suddenly “know” the Emperor is also on the ship (when, apparently, I didn’t before) – and the only tangible thing that seems to inform me of that is Argus’ warning I won’t defeat the Emperor (which doesn’t really tell me he’s *here*). Some sort of clue telling me the Emperor has just arrived on the mothership and intends to face down and kill the ‘Edenite’ trespassor would really help here.

And finally, in mission four, there’s the appearance of the Emperor as ‘alive and well’, in spite of having been killed in mission three – and the story thus far only making sense if he was dead, not just badly injured.

A short word on the custom group. On one had, they did sometimes feel overpowered (especially if you assume you are at the low level range end of the arc). But, to be fair, it’s not like they were really defeating me consistently, which suggests their balanced just fine. So I got to really thinking about it, and, honestly, there’s one thing that stands out: it’s the plethora of ice control powers, particularly on the “Frost” bosses. It’s surprisingly easy for them to stack so much –recharge on you that your entire attack tray becomes a long line of perpetually tiny buttons. While that wouldn’t be as serious an issue for a defense based set, it can get to be terribly annoying for a resistance set (like Fire). Again, it’s not so much that the ice troopers are overpowered per se (I didn’t actually get defeated facing them), as their powers lead to situations where I’m completely out of attack powers, with none of them even close to recharging.

So, overall, this was a very well done arc – it was clear a lot of work has gone into it. It’s got a good story, an interesting set of custom groups, and missions that are (generally) well put together. Very good!

Score: 4.50

I'm not entirely sure I understand here, but setting a mob to 'not auto spawn' should keep it from showing up in the random spawns in your arc, which will effectively keep it from showing up in an arc if you don't want it to. If it's not doing that, that's a bug I wasn't aware of (so far that feature has worked just fine for me).

Add and Remove adds and removes mobs from whatever custom faction you are working on. But every custom mob has a 'home' faction - you can't remove a mob from its home faction. Here's a trick, though, that you can use to 'save the mob for later' but remove it from your existing 'in-use' factions.

Create a new faction, something like 'Garbage Dump' (the name's not really important). Whatever mob you want to remove, go into the *mobs* custom profile (i.e. that series of screens where you select powers, design their costume, etc.), and go to the description. Set the mob's faction *there* to whatever your 'Garbage Dump' is, and that'll make 'Garbage Dump' the mob's home faction. Which will let you remove the mob from the faction you're actually using in the arc, while still keeping it around in case you ever do decide you want to use it.

I actually have no idea how to permanently delete a mob (without actually going outside of City Of, delving into the folder that has custom arc information and deleting text file corresponding to the mob); I'm too much of a 'store it away just in case I ever decide I want it back' sort of person, so it's never come up.

Spawning Chaos (Gave it 4 stars; but this could *easily* be 5 stars – what the arc really needs is to be jam-packed with lots of optional flavor objectives to really capture that ‘celebration of anarchy’ that you’d expect from the Freaklympics. Read on!)

Liked: The premise is a good one – you take command of a Freakshow faction to compete in the next Freaklympics. Missions three and five stand out in this arc: IMO, mission three felt the most ‘Freaklympicy’ (sow anarchy by interfering with the Vanguard’s efforts to contain the Rikti), and mission five was predictable – but in the good way (*of course* the heroes have to make another attempt to crash the awards, only this time you stop them; plus it was neat to see the other faction leaders there).

Didn’t like so much: The missions felt strangely bare for the Freaklympics – by that I mean that, IMO, the missions really need a chaotic, random-violence feel to them that felt missing to me. What I’d do is add a lot of details to really jazz up the missions:

*Ambushes, ambushes, and more ambushes! You should have Freaks of other factions trying to interfere with my efforts and ‘steal the glory’ at every turn.
*Related to that, I’ve put in even more battles (on the indoor maps – the outdoor maps don’t work as well), with more variety: my faction vs. an enemy faction, two enemy factions, etc. And make ‘em as big as you can, so that there’re still going on when I get there.
*More allies! You’ve got the right idea with the ‘helpers’ to get across the idea that I’m the head of a whole faction of Freaks, now you just need to scale it up. I should be ‘freeing’ minions and lts. (in addition to the boss leaders) in every mission. Heck, by the end of each mission, I should have a vertible army of Freaks in tow! Yeah, I know that results in an XP hit, but boy would that *feel* right!
*More random destruction! The Freaklympics is about smashin’ stuff up! I’d add a whole bunch of destructible objects as optional objectives – literally as ‘flavor objectives.’ And bombs. I should be planting bombs.
*More heroes in that last mission! As in actual heroes from the ‘Paragon Heroes’ faction! After all of the random chaos and destruction in the first part of the arc, I’d imagine I’m going to have attracted the attention of a decent number of angry heroes. Heck, I should have heroes try to stop me at random points in the earlier missions. I wouldn’t necessarily make them required objectives in the earlier missions – but I’d expect heroes to be showing up on the scene from time to time to try to stop the violence: seeing Fusionette in mission three was really a neat touch, and I’d run with the idea.

What it boils down to is more, more, MORE! With an eye toward making the whole thing seem a lot more chaotic.

Okay, and one last bit of feedback: to be honest, the thing that made mission three stand out is that it was the only one that really felt like a Freaklympics event. Stealing red coral from Cage in the Rogue Isles just doesn’t seem very ‘Freaklympicy’ – but randomly terrorizing an office building in Paragon City would (e.g. salvage as much electronics as I can carry, plant lots of bombs, destroy stuff). Likewise, rescuing a Freak from an Arachnos lab doesn’t seem very ‘Freaklympicy’ – but breaking some Freaks out of the Zig might (just an idea).

Score: 3.705

Uh oh. I better not suggest my new arc where the Well of the Furies sits down and reads the Malta Group's public blog, thereby earning them all the Notice of the Well, granting them superpowers (and, since they're now all incarnates, nicely explaining away why they can be level 54 instead of level 50 in Tin Mage), and prompting them to set up a base in the Shadow Shard where they learn that Rularuu is really just the Shard's version of Nemesis, so the entire Shadow Shard is really just a Nemesis Plot.*

Okay, but in all seriousness, while I'm not bothered by the Well of the Furies storyline, if I were, I know I would actually be *more* motivated to write AE stuff that deliberately contradicted canon just to take the endgame story in the direction I would have preferred to see it go. And, frankly, I think you're a good author, and if you did that, I'd play the arcs just to see where you would have taken the story if you'd been in charge.

That *does* go against your assertion that you want your stories to fit the established canon, but it doesn't make them completely non-canon - it just makes them an extension of (or based on) an earlier version of the game canon.

But it really boils down to what I see as the real value of AE: if you don't like the storylines in-game, it lets you play the stories you want to play. If other players also enjoy them, that's a nice bonus. I strongly suspect you've got very different motivations, but, hey, that's my 2 cents.




*Important Disclaimer: No such arc exists, and I have no intention of actually writing it.

Zone PVP: I love the temporary powers. I enjoy the little mini-games that get you Shivans and Nukes, and I love the fact that I can use them to leverage a victory when soloing an AV that is either narrowly (or quite soundly) defeating me solo. I find soloing an AV to be a lot of fun, and I dread the day when 'fixing' PVP takes that option away from me.

So as terrible as it sounds, I'm one of those people that quite literally and genuinely likes the fact the current PVP system has cleared the zones of PVPers, so I can get my temp powers in peace. I have no interest in PVP. I only want the temp powers. PVPers turn getting them from a fun exercise into miserable tedium that makes getting them not worth the effort.

So, for me, the real question is as a non PVPer, what can you do that would make me interested in PVP? Actually, that answer hasn't changed since last time: reward me for what I'm good at - getting slaughtered by other players.

Alright, back on schedule this week!

Today, it was time for Perturbation to accept...

The Bravuran Jobs (Arc ID#5073, 5 stars)

I’d been hearing stories that some nobility in exile from a small, but wealthy, nation was looking for freelancers in the Rogue Isles. I wasn’t sure of the whole story, but it didn’t some as a surprise to me when I was approached by Lloyd Frederickson, who offered me a job protecting the Contessa of this nation of ‘Bravura.’

Since it was going to be at least a few days before all of the groundwork for my next major scheme was in place, I actually had nothing better to do, and the money was way out of proportion for the job. You never knew when couple of million (and the gratitude of a small country) could come in handy to finance certain grandiose aspects of my master plan. Plus, being a ‘bodyguard’ meant I’d probably get to beat people up.

The job was to escort the Contessa’s motorcade to an appointment she had ‘elsewhere’ in the Isles. Since she had many foes, she was sure to be attacked. As it turns out, I didn’t even get there until after she’d been kidnapped. The culprits were Wyvern, which made me suspect she was probably wanted for war crimes or something, but could only be brought to justice through vigilante action. Not that I cared – I like to think of myself as a provider of equal-opportunity beatings, and it didn’t matter to me who was going to get the smack down today.


Clearly, Wyvern has invested a lot of resources into capturing the Contessa. Too bad it’s *still* not enough.

Note: I was actually pleasantly surprised that I did just fine at my current “easy” difficulty setting of 0/x5, even exemplared down to level 29. I was expecting to have to ramp down the difficulty at that level, but Wyvern, at least wasn’t terribly difficult.

It wasn’t hard to find the Contessa. I managed to “convince” her kidnappers to remand her to my care. And then started to escort her out of the warehouse district where they were keeping her.


Well, he mentioned everything but the part where Wyvern would decide to not play nice once I ‘rescued’ you and flat out try to kill you.

At that point, Wyvern decided to play nasty, coming in from a hidden location behind a cargo crate. Apparently their orders were “assassination if capture proved impossible” as before I could accomplish much of anything, they filled her with so many arrows that I suspected her corpse would actually have more empty space than internal organs.

Fortunately my villainous assets include at least one cloning lab. I took what little remained of her body, used the tissues as a basis to clone a near-perfect replica, and headed back to Lloyd to report a mission accomplished (and feed him some story about how I thought it necessary to lay low for a few weeks to lose Wyvern’s tail). He whined a lot about ‘being worried sick’ and ‘I should have at least tried to contact him to keep him in the loop’ and whatnot. Since I hadn’t been paid yet, I decided to tune him out rather than kill him. Eventually he stopped his complaining and got to the point.

Note: Ah, the downside of having it set to 0/x5 is that the Contessa’s feeble lieutenant rank pretty much ensures she’ll go down to the Wyvern ambush. Personally I don’t think it’s wise to have her set to be involved in combats. Yeah, there’s probably not much threat if you’ve got someone playing the mission solo – which is very likely. But boy I’d say you have a team playing, and you are noticeably upping your chances to have four or more rather annoyed players right at the start of the arc.

(Oh, and obviously the BS about cloning her isn’t in the arc at all – the arc actually just has her personal guards sweep in and finish the job I couldn’t. It kind of makes the rest of the arc pointless since why would anyone in their right mind ever hire *me* again if I so spectacularly fail to prove my competency right off the bat. But the story must go on… and the failure dialog does at least make it clear that the Contessa was at least impressed enough to figure I was worth retaining.)

In this case ‘retaining’ was little more than declaring me ‘friend of Bravura’ and allowing me to hang out with the Countessa and her court. She didn’t really have much for me to do right off the bat. But that was okay, since (“meanwhile”) my idiot minions had messed up a vital part of ‘the plan’, which meant that I had a few more weeks to kill while they cleaned up their mess (plus the added time that would come after they’d gotten that particular project up and running again while I was searching for a cadre of more competent minions to replace the current crop, who, tragically, would be meeting with a series of fatal ‘accidents’ after fixing their mistakes).

I digress. While I was in the midst of my down time, hanging out with the Bravurans, Lloyd was kind enough to point out an article in the paper where the Legacy Chain had decided to interfere with the ‘Harvest Ritual’ in Bravura. I didn’t really care much about Lloyd’s claims that it was just a harmless ritual that was part of the local belief system. It could be the “ritual of the sacrifice of 1,000 doe-eyed, innocent, street urchins” for all I cared. What was important is that the ritual called on some sort of ‘nature spirit’ that could pull gems out of the ground. As there are any number of doomsday devices that make use of rare gems, this was certainly something worth looking into. So I took a chopper over to Bravura to confront this gem-popping nature spirit and “convince” it to give me a “donation.”

On the way there, I did note that the Contessa had given me some sort of ‘holocard’ with a message. It was some sort of cryptic drivel about how much fun it would be to rake in armfuls of gems (no kidding, ‘tessa), and how the nature spirit cold see things I couldn’t. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but at least the Contessa did seem to have taken a liking to me. Good. That meant the extra ‘programming’ I’d had my scientists put into the clone was working. Having the Contessa in my pocket could prove very lucrative indeed.

The Bravuran farmland was flat out crawling with Legacy Chain. They’d captured several farmers, babbling accusations about their participation in a vile ritual. I freed them, hoping for a reward, or at least some information about what was going on here – but got nothing. What a waste of my time. If the farmers hadn’t wisely fled the area, I would have probably offed them just out of spite.


Not that I really care, but I must admit I’m not clear on why exactly a bunch of farmers worshipping a gem pooping nature troll has your tights all in a bind…

The nature spirit was a bit more helpful. He made some sort of ‘magical’ adjustment that allowed me to see a trio of previously invisible ‘spires’ that I needed to destroy to put a halt to the Legacy Chain’s ritual.

Oddly, the spires seemed to radiate a ‘normalcy’ that was (evidently) toxic to the raw magical power infusing the land. My guess was the ritual would rend the magic from the land entirely – probably killing anything magical (or that used magic) in the area. At least that’s what I gathered from the Chain’s blather about ‘giving their lives’ to end the ‘abomination’ here. I wasn’t worried about myself (well, maybe a little – after all, some of the relics I’ve collected over the years, and actually use from time to time, are magical), but if they purged all magic from these fields, I would likely be out several million in gems. That just wasn’t going to happen.

So I destroyed the spires, and the nature spirit turned the stones from the destroyed spires into gems. I was a tad irked at the relatively small number of them, but it wasn’t that hard a job, so I let it slide.

Crud. Even travel time included, I’d really only burned a bit more than a day. I’d have to see if Lloyd had anything else worth my interest.

The next Bravuran job that caught my interest began with an insurgent action: a Sergeant Frazzani had staged a raid of one of the Contessa’s mountain labs. There were sure to be valuable items of experimental technology within for me to salvage. And even taking my planned looting into account, ‘rescuing’ the lab from the Sergeant’s men was bound to make the Bravuran higher-ups happy – sure (in my version of the arc) the Contessa was a clone programmed to be loyal to me, but it didn’t hurt for those loyal to her to see me as a powerful ally, rather than a potential threat. Plus, as an added perk, I would get to face off against the Bravuran military – potentially useful should it ever become more expedient for me to just take the direct approach and crush their little country into the ground.

Note: Sadly, I completely forgot to take any screenshots in this mission. Oh well.

I did find the Bravuran army quite able to hold its own. They were far more reminiscent of Arachnos – with quite varied abilities that can present quite the challenge in large groups – than a typical military force. Not that that surprised me – small and wealthy implied they’d be investing a lot of money in their standing army, and it showed.

I tested my skills against many a group in the mountain lab. It required some strategy beyond the simple ‘take out whatever nearby target Tab highlights’ (hunt out and kill the vulcans first, then focus on the masterminds) – but was certainly within my capabilities. Eventually though, I felt I learned all I could as to how to effectively face them down. Since they were present in the lab in large enough numbers to make attempts to recover technology futile (a result of my settings – I have little doubt if set to a lower difficulty those optional objectives would be easy enough to complete), I opted to simply free the test subjects and kill Frazzani (i.e. the bare minimum needed to complete the mission).

Notes: Honestly, the clues did a good job of making it seem like I made it out with an impressive cache of technology – even without the optional objectives. So while it’s a safe bet I missed out on some flavor clues, I found the mission itself to be just fine, game-play and story wise. As mentioned, I did fight a large number of Bravuran military spawns. They certainly keep you engaged, but once you figure out the best strategy for defeating them they suffer from the safe problem most custom groups do (and, frankly, “complex” groups like Arachnos) – you certainly increase your survivability, but it is matched by only a minimal increase in the rate at which you can actually defeat each spawn. In short: figuring out how to defeat a new group with very little danger to yourself is a fun challenge (and was here). But once you’ve figured it out – you can divide them into two categories. The ones you can mow through with little time and effort (which encourages me to actually fight through missions), and the ones you can’t (which encourages me to skip fights looking for mission objectives – or anything else that’ll advance the story). In any case, the Bravuran army falls soundly into the latter - so after I’d had my fill of them, it was time to just quickly complete the mission.

I honestly think that’s exactly what the author intended in designing the custom group (and there are hints to that effect in the mission briefings/debriefings), and I have absolutely no problem with that design for a custom group. But if, for some reason, the author ever did want to alter the group to slant them more toward that first category (e.g. to encourage players set to higher difficulties to still fight all the way through the mission), I’ll state the obvious: removing the heals and the buffing powers would slant the group toward the first category mentioned above. Again, though, to be clear, I’m not suggesting that as a good change – just noting it for posterity.

Anyway, Bravuria had a bunch of Italian nobles over. The newspaper article Floyd was reading editorialized on the importance of good relations with this “Italian contingent” being slightly marred by their refusal to entrust their valuables to the care of the Bravurian Guard. Plus they were really becoming a major imposition for the hotel staff. I got the distinct impression Floyd was hoping a freelance villain would abscond with said valuables, thereby reinforcing the importance of foreign dignitaries trusting in Bravurian ‘homeland security.’ I figured that was worth my time.

Well, at least until I learned the Italian contingent was a bunch of Carnies. Still, they were easier targets than the Bravurian army, so who was I to complain?

The Contessa’s obligatory holo-card hinted at insiders who’d help me complete Operation: Rob the Carnies Blind. I found her, but she didn’t actually last terribly long (often lieutenants exposed to hordes spawned for 5 players don’t), but, you know, it’s the thought that counts. Oh, and the loot. That counts too. And the Carnies had plenty of it, stored in great big steamer trunks scattered liberally about.

After a bit of searching (and some smashing in of Carnie masks) I located a wall safe that contained valuables belonging to the “Duchess” – the leader of the Carnie contingent here. As it happens, the Duchess had been out having a good time, but returned to the hotel soon after I took all her stuff. Since I really couldn’t be sure whether or not she had something of value on her person, I decided it was high time to go introduce myself.

And my how the Duchess had quite the entourage! Three Ring Mistresses (the Duchess included) and support staff. I decided it would be quite wise to wrap myself in the magics of my Demonic Aura before my grand entrance.


Sorry lady. No matter how many times I type, ‘Okay, if you’ll back off I will to’ in chat, you keep trying to kill me. So, no, I’m not going to just ‘stand aside and let you shine.’

The Duchess was quite “entertained” by my presence. Well, if by entertained you mean “on the receiving end of a savage beating.” Hey, it was entertaining for *me* - and that’s what really matters. With little else to do, I departed the hotel, horde of loot in hand.

Floyd was all too pleased that I’d dealt with the Carnie matter, and did provide some insight as to Bravura’s wealth – it seems many factions have made the mistake of thinking the small nation weak and come here to cause trouble. Invariably they are driven off by the nations powerful defenders, and forced to leave behind all of value they brought with them, thereby increasing the nation’s coffers with plenty to afford further ‘upgrades’ to Bravura’s defenses.

And once again I visited Floyd as he read aloud Bravura’s newspaper. This time the article he focused on was somewhat surprising. It flat out told me that the Central Bravuran bank was defenseless while in the midst of a ‘shift change’ of sorts (of their security). The sheer volume of loot I could steal staggered the mind. And, oddly enough, Floyd had also mentioned a massive portal device they’d just had installed here in their Rogue Island “embassy.”

Obviously it seemed as though Floyd was practically begging me to teleport into the bank and steal as much as I could carry out. While I wasn’t clear on exactly how to teleport back to the Rogue Isles, I figured it was worth the risk for the sheer amount of loot I could get.

Floyd was kind enough to let me know I had 15 minutes before the security forces returned. I wasn’t sure exactly what he was up to, but it didn’t matter – I had a bank to rob.

As I suspected it was an obvious trap, and one with a clear purpose. The Contessa wished to field test not only her army’s ability to repulse the attack of a full fledged supervillain, she was also interesting in testing a prototype personal suit of powered armor.

The battles with the Bravuran soldiers went as expected – I’d already learned how to effectively deal with them, although I was sure in defeating them I was providing the Contessa with valuable intel as to the techniques a superpowered villain tends to use (and potential areas of improvement for her soliders).


Contessa’s Notes: “Hmm … so the secret to Perturbation’s fighting style is that he repeatedly punches targets in the face until they lose consciousness. Ah. I think that won’t be too hard to replicate.”

Also as expected while the loot in the vaults was impressive indeed, it was clear it was but a small fraction of the nation’s true reserves. The Contessa clearly intended this as a direct test of my abilities, and the loot was merely my hazard pay for letting her and her forces attack me.

What the Contessa couldn’t have anticipated (at least before starting work on the armor – which must have been before I was ever put on ‘retainer’) is that choosing to have the armor generate power blasts was not an effective way to stop me.


If by ‘superlative’ you mean ‘none of your energy blasts have a chance of landing’, then yeah, it’s going to be a superlative fight.

Perhaps her next prototype will have a more varied set of attack methods? Who knew, but it would not be me she’d face off again. I’d gotten all the ‘capital’ that I’d need for the near future from Bravuria, and my minions had finally gotten my own schemes back on track.

Well, with one exception. Clearly my techniques for programming clones had some kinks to work out – the Contessa had succeeded in completely overcoming my subliminal obedience and loyalty protocols, and re-asserted her native personality. Ah well.

Stuff I didn’t hate: This is the first arc I’ve played in quite a while that I would characterize as “charming” – which is quite something for a villain arc. There’s plenty of humor in the arc, much of it centered around your character’s single-minded pursuit of loot. The missions are introduced in an interesting way (Floyd dropping hints at opportunities for you based on stuff he’s reading in the Bravuran newspaper), and the two main contacts are well developed (Floyd through the briefings, and the Contessa through the holocards that introduce missions two through five).

Of course, related to the holocards, clues are well-written and (IMO) used in all the right places in the arc. And while the overall mission design doesn’t have much in the way of innovation, that doesn’t stop them from having excellent pacing and remarkable attention to the little details (dialog, what you see when you click on a glowie, mob descriptions, etc.)

Finally, the custom group is well designed; the wide variety of powers (including ally buffs) makes them a cut above other groups in that level range in terms of difficulty, but they certainly don’t go overboard. And, as an added plus, different mobs have very distinct visual appearances, which makes it very easy, at a glance, to identify the mobs that you should target and defeat first.

Perturbations: Really only three things even stood out, and both are relatively minor. First, The Bravuran Jobs isn’t really a story arc per se – it is far more reminiscent of the stand alone missions doled out by a contact out side of their assigned story arc. Sure, they’re thematically related, but they’re not really telling an overall story. To be fair, that’s not really a bad thing (heck, I’ve got an arc that does that too), and doesn’t really need to be fixed, but if at any point the author felt like making the connections between the missions stronger it would be easy enough: perhaps a few clues linking a previously completed mission to the current one (e.g. the gems you got in mission two include a few very rare varieties that are particularly useful in powering the technology you steal in mission three), or forshadowing later missions (finding schematics for a suit of powered armor that appear to be slated for modifications apparently meant to counter some of your abilities in mission three, or a guard patrol in the same mission gossiping about some Italian contingent that’ll arrive in a few days).

Second, and completely a matter of opinion – but this really struck me as more a ‘Rogue’ arc than a Villain arc. Obviously the arc was published before you could even flag an arc as Rogue or Vigilante, but it certainly felt a lot more roguish to me.

Third, the only actual mission design element I disagreed with is that the Contessa is killable in the first mission, and even that comes with a serious caveat. I absolutely acknowledge that there’d be almost no chance that she’d die with a solo player on a low difficulty setting, but the fact that her rank doesn’t really scale up at higher difficulties, or on larger teams (which even I must admit is not really the arc’s audience) greatly increases the chance she’ll die in those circumstances. And, ironically, the nature of the opposing group really gives them impression that when she goes down, she’s DEAD. For some odd reason, punches, kicks, blasts of stuff, even gunfire somehow doesn’t suspend the belief that ‘oh, she just lost consciousness, and needs to mediport out.’ But ‘archery’ is unique in leaving visual evidence of damage delivery in the target: it’s really hard to think the Contessa could possibly have survived the barrage when you literally see dozens of arrows sticking out of her. Sure, it’s pretty unrealistic to think she’d survive eighteen gunshot wounds, or being shredded by ice bolts, or felled by direct hits from twenty consecutive fire blasts, or whatever. But the game just doesn’t draw in the bullet holes, or leave her a charred pile of ash – it does draw those arrows, though. Yeesh.

To be fair, I do think I see the author’s intent in making her a combat escort. It makes it clear that she’s willing to get her hands dirty and do things herself, which makes it easy to accept that she’d be willing to later don a suit of power armor and face you in battle (not that it was actually hard to buy that).

But again, all of these are very minor, in my opinion. The author can easily ignore all of them (and probably will – there are valid counter-arguments to each point I made); it’s already an excellent arc.

And that, of course, is the final verdict – this is a very good arc!

Score: 4.792

Bringing a Lord to Power (My 'real' rating was 3 stars, but the score had me give it 4 stars in game)

Liked: The mission briefings are well done. Overall, I’d say the design of the missions is above average – specifically, while the first three were basically thematically related newspaper missions (defeat X and his cronies, with relatively little variation), they were also fast-paced and never really felt tedious. I actually thought that fourth mission was really quite good: fun to play with plenty of interesting foes and the timed aspect fit well with the story. It was really only the very end of that mission that had a real downer to it. The fifth mission didn’t stand out per se, but it did have more variety than the first three, and the little twist involving the Tormented was neat (I saw it coming, but it was still neat). By and large, the custom groups were good too, with a really good job of making Blightlord’s undead minions really reflect the pet models while still having an element of uniqueness to them.

Disliked: Two biggies: motivation, and power selection (especially for the AV characters). I can tell you this arc certainly comes off as a classic example of an ego arc (complete with the “bask in the glory of AV versions of all of my favorite characters). That might not be the case, but if it isn’t, it certainly has a lot of the elements ego arcs have: overpowered AVs built very much like player characters (including power choices that make sense for a PC, but really get obnoxious on an AV), the definite feel that you are not the central focus of the story – which is closely related to the fact that your character, with practically no reason given, is cast as the lackey for the supervillain (or hero) the story is really centered on.

The problem with this is that the motivation for the character to participate in the arc is very limited. See, I’m a level 50 villain. I’ve defeated Lord Recluse, single-handedly. Put down countless members of the Vindicators and the Freedom Phalanx. Witnessed (and facilitated) a future where I become a god. Etc. Blightlord just shows up and starts ordering me around, demanding that I prove myself. I’m not going to prove myself by going on his idiot errand. I’m going to prove myself by beating the tar out of him right then and there. But, then, of course, there’s no reason to do the actual arc.

So the only explanation for going along with this is that I’m totally cowed by my fear of Blightlord, and desperately hoping that his promises of giving me my “just reward” don’t involve me become one of his undead lackies. The former directly conflicts with my status as a villain at the pinnacle of my power. The latter requires me to be some sort of complete moron. Either way it’s bad.

On the other hand, if Blightlord approaches me with false humility, and offers me great power, and equal partnership in his grand schemes. And I decide to join forces with him (likely fully intending to betray him and take the power for myself – which I’m sure he’s also plotting). And as the story unfolds, the facades slowly come down, and it is clear that neither of us intend to share power – speeding us along to a climactic final confrontation. That casts the character as an equal participant in the story, with a more realistic motivation to play through the arc’s missions.

Sure, if the arc were, say prior to level 20 (everyone’s going to have a different cutoff), it would at least seem reasonable that my villain would be early enough in their villain career to play dutiful lacky. But the arc’s geared to include level 50 villains – and they have very, very different motivations (and are very unlikely to play ‘sidekick’).

Power Choices:
As I said before, I found the two custom groups (Blightlord’s minions and Techno-Tyrant’s army) to be pretty neat with good descriptions. In general I didn’t have a major problem with their powers beyond one nitpick that really stood out – frankly, given my build, giving the robot bosses a Tier 9 Godmode power is a risky design decision. I could frequently stun and take them down before they popped it – or delay its activation enough that I could do the tiny amount of damage needed to finish them off fairly quickly even with it on. But you play this with a lower damage AT, and I suspect the bosses would prove immensely frustrating.

To me, the problem related to power choices had to do with the AVs: as I mentioned before, they’re built like player characters, which is pretty risky when you scale their powers up to AV levels. (And sure, I played them as AVs, *but* I want to make it clear that even scaled down to EB status, the problems with some of the powers would be almost as bad.) Here are the specifics:

Burning Brawler – The Bad: Aim is really sucky on an AV; frankly, 10 seconds of getting to bypass my defenses with damage boosted attacks from an AV that actually has the top tier attacks in his set is not much fun. It’d be one thing if it was a ‘start the fight’ power, and then he didn’t get to use it again for the rest of the fight (two purples and some oranges to weather the storm); but he gets to use it again every 90 seconds. Good: He *is* optional, and easily skipped. Verdict: Overall it’s really not that big of a deal; it’s a sucky power choice, but at least you can avoid having to face it.

Elitist – Bad: Yee gads, where to begin. He’s got at least 35% S/L resistance (probably 45%). He’s got unyielding, so the only method I’ve got to shut down his resistances (stun him when the purple triangles go down) is useless. And then, once I did get him down to 20% life, he pops unstoppable. So for three minutes I basically can’t do a thing to him, and he gets to heal all the way back up to 80%. (And, evidently, AV-class foes don’t crash at the end.) And he’s a required foe, so you can’t just skip him. The Good: Well, actually, you *can* skip him. It’s a timed mission, so so long as you just fail the mission, you don’t have to deal with him – you only have to deal with Blightlord berating you (which further erodes the whole motivation issue). Theoretically, you actually have help for this fight too, as Blightlord provided rather powerful allies. In practice, the two ambushes Techno-Tyrant spawned in were enough to wipe the floor with my ‘helpers’. Verdict: Boo!

Blightlord – Bad: Since there’s no toxic defense, his poison-based debuffs can really only be avoided by using purples to boost my positional defense (or hitting my godmode power). Good: But, on the upside, that very same purple (or having godmode active) tended to negate the effect of the occasional lucky hit – the debuff wasn’t that much more than what the purple was giving me anyway. And, as an added bonus, his undead minions were great batteries for using power sink to heal and get back endurance. Verdict: This fight was a nice challenge, actually. It took awhile, but there was no one thing he could do that was overwhelming, and no tricks that fell into the “there’s no point in even continuing the fight for the next three minutes” category.

So this particular arc really struck me as ‘good balanced by bad’ – there were lots of times I was having a good time, paired with plenty of times were the arc wasn’t much fun to play (and I think you’d be surprised how much of that is exacerbated by the motivation thing making it harder to be invested in the story).

Score: 3.28

It’s a little late (been a very busy week), but better late than never, eh?

A Clone of Your Own? (Arc ID#453091; 4 stars, 5 stars given in game)

Here I am, just minding my business downloading some “conquer the world in only 90 days for FREE” type apps on my phone, when I get a notification that some moron has posted on my “maskbook” page. Now here’s what you need to know. My “friends” through any social networking site fall into two categories – people who I only “friended” so that, if need be (or I got bored) I could hunt them down and pummel them just to pass the time, and people who might be potentially useful to me, and may need to occasionally be hunted down and pummeled to remind them of the importance of volunteering to do things to help me out.

Consequently, I don’t get a lot of messages on maskbook, since most of my “friends” have learned that said message BETTER not be a waste of my time, or a savage beating will be in their near future.

Now, normally, I usually have a feel for when I’m about to get a message, since I’ve got an *actual* network of contacts to keep me informed (so, in a sense, the maskbook crowd is just there as a way to give lackeys the chance to curry my favor by telling me about things that, thanks to my real contacts, I was already tipped off about). But this time, the message was completely out of the blue.

Fortunately, it was a slow day, so it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition to track down this loser and pulp him. Imagine my surprise when said message claimed to come from me. Now, typically, future-me (whom I’ve put down in that Crey lab more times than I can count) doesn’t post messages to me on maskbook, so I figured there was something else going on. With the help of my aforementioned contacts, I tracked the message down to some guy named Dr. Mephit. Mephit was about to have the amount of time it takes me to get my knuckles all cracked and loose prior to the mandatory beating to explain what was going on.


Mephit, immediately before the mandatory beating.

Mephit was apparently working with a bunch of Freakshow on some science project. They’d had a major breakthrough, but then the lead Freak (a ‘pretty smart guy’) learned about the message, and had freaked out, stolen his half of the research, and fled into the sewers.

This was very understandable, as I was having a very similar reaction to learning about the same message – only it wasn’t about to lead to my fleeing into the sewers. It was about to lead to Mephit getting shuffled off this mortal coil… but I figured I’d better find out what I could (and perhaps turn the situation – whatever that might be - to my advantage) before the killing spree began.

Mephit made me an offer. One, he promised me things would be clearer once I went after the Freaks to recover the research. Two, he also offered me a boatload of money. Time would tell if it would be enough to convince me to practice a bit of anger management. He also made some vague references to “familiar faces” and “me being the right one – ‘for the job’” (suggesting he’d originally intended to ask if I was “the right one,” which I really didn’t like the sound of).

So I headed off into the sewers to figure out what was going on.

Note: It just occurred to me – you know what would be really great? How about a “mission accept” clue that details what that maskbook message actually said – I do remember thinking it odd that the content of the message never shows up anywhere. While not vital to the actual plot, it does strike me as a very useful ‘flavor’ detail.

I didn’t have to go far for things to start making a little more sense. Just inside the sewer entrance, I found a very flawed-looking clone of myself. The flawed copy appeared to have my physical prowess, but none of my control over energy – the thing was trying to cut me with blades, and spent some time trying to go all kung-fu on me. It went down fast. What worried me is that the Freaks were calling it “Bad Clone #1” – which suggested there were more.


I agree with your naming scheme here, Freakshow, as this is an exceptionally bad copy of me. Plus, it is puking – a lot. Perturbation, in general, doesn’t do that.

I headed further into the sewers, and located a second clone. It seemed to be better constructed than the first, and commanded an array of radiation-related powers. I didn’t know if whoever made this thing had gotten a better command of giving him my energy-related powers, or if the thing was somehow naturally radioactive. Not that it mattered – I wasn’t about to let it live. I still had one more clone to hunt down.


No, *I’m* the EVIL version. You’re just the soon-to-be-dead version.

Note: In the interest of noticing little details – how do I know there are three clones total I need to hunt down? The first clue points out there’s at least one more, but nothing about calling this clone #2 (or the clue) hints to more. It’s not a terribly big deal (and the map may not accommodate it), but if there’s a way to hint there’s yet another clone down here, I’d put it in. (The reason it’s not a big deal: I still haven’t found the research notes, so it is believable I’d just stumble across #3 too).

I found the last clone deeper in the sewers, near the stolen research notes. He was a better copy than the others – but, much to my chagrin, seemed to have psionic powers and ‘netherworld’ defenses. The latter was a plus (not a good defense against my energy-based powers), but the former almost made me wonder if this clone was constructed with me in mind: psychic powers are my worst weakness. It made me wonder if those clone was constructed with the intent on having a copy capable of killing me.


No, idiot. *I’m* a Brute. If you’re throwing around psychic blasts, I don’t know exactly what you are, but you’re not a Brute. But don’t worry. Soon there won’t be enough of you left to worry about what you are…

Note: I’m well aware all three clones just have random powers – but it is interesting how these random powers can be worked into the story…

I now had three good reasons to kill Mephit where he stood. But I also had three reasons to keep him alive. One – I suspected only he could decode his research notes (which looked more like child scrawl to me). Two, I got the impression it was the Freakshow making these clones, and I doubt I’d come across their leader (none of them seemed terribly smart) – so I needed Mephit’s help to find him, so I could shut down this cloning operation for good. And three – I stood to earn a lot of resources by allowing Mephit to live (for now): not only his money, but, perhaps later I’d have the opportunity to raid his lab and take all his stuff for myself.

After returning with his notes, Mephit made it clear that he was simply hired to perfect the cloning technology – he wasn’t responsible for ‘procurement’ of the DNA. So it was really the Freaks who were the reason it was *my* clones running around the sewers. Make no mistake, Mephit would pay for this. His thinking should have been “You got *Perturbation’s* DNA? No way am I cloning that! He’d kill me if he ever found out.” But at least he’d get to live a little while longer while I focused on those in need of more immediate punishment – the Freaks who’d made the horrible, horrible mistake of stealing my DNA with the intent of using it to clone me.

Once Mephit saw the notes, he was chagrined to find that the Freakshow ‘scientist’ had doodled all over them – somewhat distressing that the doodles really made about as much sense to me as the actual notes… if Mephit had actual talent, writing it down in a way that made sense was certainly not his forte. On the up side, though, they made sense enough to him. He frantically told me they (the notes) were not all there, and that the ‘smart Freak’ must still have them. He surmised the smart Freak and his lackies were deeper in the sewers. He offered me a nice fat bonus to go in after them and get the rest of the notes. Given that I was already hell-bent on hunting down and visiting unfathomable torrents of pain on that particular Freak for daring to make copies of me, the extra cash was just gravy. Well … very tasty gravy that slightly increased the odds I might allow Mephit out of this one alive. (Note: Okay, Mephit didn’t actually offer me a bonus, but, personally, I think he should. If you’re role playing the arc from the standpoint that revenge is your motivation here, more money is just gravy. If you’ve got a more ‘rogue’ mindset here, then the fact you keep getting paid for the job is itself motivation. The bottom line – you gotta admit, Mephit offering you more money only helps to motivate a villain/rogue character to continue the arc! And you don’t really have to change much – Mephit can easily offer the bonus ‘up front’ as part of the rest of your pay “on the way out.”)

Into the sewers I went. And then deeper – I found the “lab” where the Freaks were working on their cloning project. It wasn’t a lab at all – just more sewers … sewers that I’m sure the Freaks had pulled cloning equipment into. But I did find clear evidence they were working on more clones. A found another defective version of myself – apparently the cloning process basically robbed it of just about all of its powers, so it had commandeered a small army of robots to help it fight its way out of the lab before the Freakshow terminated it. Frankly, I was happy to kill the thing myself.


Defective clone Perturbation and his army of wussy robots tries in vain to figure out exactly where *real* Perturbation is. It’s hard to land a punch if you can’t see the target…

The “lab” turned out to be at the very back of the sewer junction I’d entered. There I found both a clone pod that contained a (still-child-aged) clone of me, and a rack of lab equipment being used to perfect the cloning process. I destroyed both, but while in the process of obliterating the child version of myself (distasteful, but far preferable to a potential ‘date’ here in the Isles thinking I ‘get around’, and therefore treat me with the general disinterest reserved for heartless villains who ‘get around’ – which is exactly what I am – but that’s not the point) I was also attacked by the Freak who was masterminding the whole operation. He was an odd-looking one who called himself the ‘5mart 1’ and didn’t like to stay dead, but he was nothing I couldn’t handle. (Note: As much as I liked the whole ‘Wily Freak’ thing – especially after I watched your video review and thereby got the reference, I do this the new name is a much better fit to the arc. Just thought you’d like to know…although after finishing the arc, I’m thinking it was this way the first time, and I just didn’t remember).


And now the Smart Freak prepares to get his just desserts. (Little did Perturbation know that he was so hopped up on Excelsior that he just refused to stay down, even through multiple beatings.

Note: “These are not all of the notes, that smart Freak…” (2nd mission briefing) is a comma-splice. It should be two separate sentences: “These are not all of the notes. That smart Freak…” (or at least a semicolon).

I also found the best clone yet – the thing looked just like me, although I was a little shocked to see him summon in a bunch of undead (wow, what an unfortunate roll for the random power choice here). It didn’t really matter – I’d have to kill him soon enough, but, just for my amusement, and since his countenance didn’t horribly offend me this time, I figured I’d let him tag along for a bit – at least until I got out of the sewers. Note: I’ve got to say, given the progression of the arc up to this point (and the fact I don’t have to actually fight him) I think it’d make perfect sense to set this particular ‘ganger’ to have my native powers.

Oh, and I also found a bunch of files on ‘smart Freak’s’ iPhone. I wouldn’t have suspected a thing until I found a reference to ‘favorite sea mammal’ (for those that haven’t played the arc, Mephit is positively obsessed with experiments involving sea creatures, so this was a clear reference to him). It looked like ‘ol Doc Mephit had lied to me. It was he who’d provided the Freaks with the DNA all along. I didn’t know yet where he’d gotten it, but I did know that that made him a dead man.

Even as I approached the doors to Mephit’s lab, I could hear the nutcase whipping up his minions into a frenzy. The notes I’d gotten for him earlier were really all he needed to get his operation up and running again. That extra crap he’d sent me after was little more than an attempt to get me killed before I found out the truth about his role in all of this. That he was even boasting about it loud enough for me to hear it all before I even barged through the lab’s front entrance made it clear he was confident the Freaks would be able to finish me off.

He was about to pay dearly for that mistake. (Note: That’s not exactly how it happened, but, you know, consider it as a viable idea for even more fleshing out of what is turning out to be a much improved arc!)

I wasn’t terribly surprised, but upon entering the lab I found *hordes* of ‘Mephits’ wandering around the place, with orders to shoot on sight. So it looked like I’d be fighting a small army of the Doc’s own clones to put an end to this little project of his.


Ironically, the real Dr. Mephit is the only one *not* shooting at me…

Very Important Note: I love the idea of using Mephit as the basis for the clones – but *hate* that it is a group full of lieutenants, with no bosses or minions. My god man, there’s got to be enough room to at least add a minion and boss version so we don’t take that -75% XP hit. Granted, that’s a real quick fix – but you know what would be even better? Design a bunch of mobs (of *all* ranks – dear Lord, can’t stress that one enough) that look like Mephit has been splicing himself with sea creatures – boy would that really fit into the arc! But, still – seriously – failing that, at least fill out the group: make the minions ‘flawed’ by making them very thin, and perhaps a bit on the small side. Make the lieutenants larger and more robust (you don’t even have to change the basic costume elements), and the bosses even bigger than that. A couple of tweaks to descriptions, and you’ve got a whole set of mobs that’ll award normal XP. Heck, at the very least just adding exact replicas (of minion and boss) rank, down to their powers, even all with the same name, is better than -75% XP. (I’d guess only the bosses would be worth lower than average XP if they didn’t have additional powers over the lt. versions). Sure with that very last option you’d likely get a few players complaining about there being no differentiation between ranks, or ‘there’s no “in game” reason given for why some clones are minions, others lts., and others bosses. But I’d be willing to wager that, even with the complaints, that’ll go over a lot better than large numbers of lieutenants that offer about half what a minon would each. Yuck.

That said, I do want to stress that the basic idea ends up being pretty striking, visually – I’m set to 0/x5, so I was wading through literal hordes of Mephit clones … frankly, the further I got into the mission, the more I considered that if you wanted to keep all of them completely identical (across ranks) there would certainly be a certain visual appeal to that.

I found 5smart1 in the lab … although now he *was* calling himself ‘Wily’ (hmm … was it always like that and I just didn’t remember it from last time); like me, he’d come seeking revenge. I cut those plans short, considering that they might interfere with my own aspirations of revenge.

Then, I fought through vast hordes of clones…

To find Mephit himself. I opted to keep him alive for now, in return for telling me exactly where the files on me were. I then fought through more hordes of clones to get to the computer holding them…

I located the last remaining research files – most of them were Mephit’s gibbering nonsense (I suppose it’d be fair to say it was actually brilliant research – but all rendered in Mephit-ese that made it almost wholly incomprehensible to any sane person), but I did find a reference to the “original source of the DNA was destroyed” while “a perfect clone was successfully created, but escaped.” Bah! I refuse to believe I’m just a clone of some ‘original’ Perturbation! It is no doubt a trick by Mephit – he’ll be made to pay!

Note: As when I played the arc before, I actually really like this twist. It answers the ongoing question of how Mephit got my DNA in the first place without actually answering it. More specifically, it actually answers how he got the DNA in a way that I would have no memory of…

There was only one last thing to do in the lab, before it was time to go back, fetch Mephit, and deal with him. Mephit had created another “perfect” clone of me, and I needed to make sure it was destroyed.

I’d say there’s something kind of surreal about killing a copy of yourself, but I’ve done it more times than I can count, so it was really more like ‘business as usual.’


Oh, I don’t think that’s quite true, oh ‘Perfect Clone’ – considering that you can’t seem to hit me, and I’m having absolutely no trouble beating the tar out of you.

With the clone taken care of, I tied Mephit to a rather large bomb, and blew up the lab. That took care of the very last ‘issue’ – making sure Mephit understood the horrible depth of his mistake in trying to clone me (and in daring to plant evidence to suggest I was really just an escaped clone all along). I should mention nothing about killing Mephit or destroying the lab is actually in the arc.. I just added it to make the story more consistent with the previous writeup.

Things I didn’t Hate: I have no doubt that cleanup work (and ‘polish’) has been done since I played this arc for Arc Club, and as a whole it has had a positive influence on the arc. The arc is fast-paced, the story is complex enough to be interesting, without being overly convoluted. There’s a neat twist at the end. And there’s more: this time around I felt as though my character’s motivations matched what I was doing in the arc better. Even the first time around, Dr. Mephit’s ‘quirks’ were entertaining, and that hasn’t changed. Arbitrary scoring systems aside, this time around the arc had the ‘feel’ of a very good arc, with just a few things that still bothered me, that kept it from an ‘actual’ rating of 5 stars (it, obviously still got 5 stars in game).

Now, to be honest, I’m not sure how much of the ‘changes’ were actual improvements to the arc (I’m *sure* there were several), and how much were the mission objectives showing up in a more fortuitous order (Examples: the cloning pod in mission two still didn’t seem to have an objective tied to it – but this time around ‘5smart1’ was in the back of the room, so the mission finished after I’d destroyed the pod, which gave the illusion of the mission objectives flowing better; granted, I might have just missed the objective, but I honestly don’t remember seeing one. Another example: in the third mission I’d found the files before offing my clone, so there was no reason to suspect ‘in game’ that if I went back down, I’d find Mephit there spoiling for a fight – so although it left a ‘loose end’ feeling to the story, that was somehow less jarring than have a boss fight with a major NPC after the mission completed; which leaves you wondering why he isn’t a required objective?)

Stuff that Perturbed me: There are certainly enough improvements (including improving the flow of the story) to warrant the higher score (4 stars, with 5 given in game rather than the original 3 with 4 given in game), but there are still things that were missing from the first play through that are still missing. A lot of the details are in the writeup, but for me, the main things that stood out were the following:

(1) While the text of the message to yourself isn’t important to the plot, it was a detail that it felt like it should be there (very minor thing),

(2) After watching the author’s video review, I did get a kick out of learning why ‘5smart1’ goes by ‘Wily Freak’ – but man did I think it was odd that his name got changed from mission two to mission three without a lot of development in the arc itself – there’s nothing really in the briefings or the clues about that (again, minor, but still something that, for whatever reason, kind of bugged me),

(3) The ‘unmarked’ mission objectives (although it’s very possible this isn’t even a problem). The only one I know about for sure is the cloning pod (the arc’s made it clear a major goal is to destroy everything having to do with my clones – so why wouldn’t a pod with a baby version of me be a required objective)? Forgive me, though, if I just totally missed the objective – I distinctly don’t remember there being one, but I might be wrong. To a lesser extent, if Dr. Mephit really did spawn ‘behind’ me in mission three, I’d have no way of suspecting. (That might be gone – it just seems like that would be a very good way to end the arc – you’ve defeated your clone, and now it’s time to put Mephit down once and for all).

(4) From a story perspective, the fact that my business with Dr. Mephit does still feel rather unfinished, still. It feels like there needs to be an actual, final confrontation with him – or at least some hint as to his fate by the end of the arc (or in the souvie). The last I saw him this time around he’d basically just told me to go upstairs.

(5) And, of course, the one-rank custom group for mission three. In my opinion, from a design standpoint, there’s just no reason to do it this way. Even if the minion and boss versions were completely identical to the lt. versions in the game, the fact that large armies of ‘Mephit’ wouldn’t all con the same color (which, I admit, did have an odd visual appeal) is *far* less objectionable to getting only 25% experience for anything. I really would highly recommend putting in a fix to that…

Overall, this time around the arc certainly felt improved over the first time – and I have no doubt some of those were actual changes and fixes from the first time around. But I can’t help shake the feeling that at least part of the feeling of the arc’s improved pacing and flow came from better luck with how things spawned in (I happened to get to the clone pod first this time; I didn’t have to backtrack to find the files after defeating my perfected clone, and so, if Dr. Mephit was there, I never had a hint there was a ‘climactic’ fight waiting for me after the mission was over.)

So basically, it’s a better arc this time around, and a good, entertaining arc overall; plenty to like, with just a few things to bother me (although one is a big deal that I don’t think the author should ignore).

Score: 4.15

Well crud, I didn't see Gren's request to switch the arc until after I'd played it and written up feedback. Sorry about that.

Well, hopefully the feedback will help make the next couple of plays on the arc more positive - I did think the arc had problems, but they're very fixable problems. I hope this helps.

One Night Bridge (Arc ID#477906, 2 stars; would have given 3 stars in game, but that’s against the club rules, so I left it unrated.)

What I liked: I think the overall concept behind the story is good – the idea of a group of renegade Kheldians wanting to flee to another dimension to escape the coming storm (and the potential death of their race) is a neat one. I thought it lead to a neat concept embodied in the custom group, the Cult of the Stars.

Things I thought could use improvement: The arc seems unfinished – it could really benefit from a lot more detail, I think. For example, all of the mission objectives in the 3rd mission (or perhaps it’s the second?) are just the defaults that display when objectives aren’t actually entered in. I also think the clues need to be expanded (and the arc could use more of them to help drive the story along). I was a little confused when Brightstar referred to a friend of hers as directing the Crey lab that I raid, and worried that Voidfire would raid the lab – yet during the mission, it appears that the lab was working with Voidfire all along (that was a big, ‘wait, huh?’).

The Cult of the Stars seems like a neat idea, but there’s very little development of the group in the arc other than presenting them as “Voidfire’s followers.” And the whole ‘reveal’ at the end of mission three had an ‘out of the blue’ feel to it – almost like “oh, and by the way, Voidfire’s my daughter.” That’s more a matter of taste, granted, but it seemed jarring to me.

Another thing I considered a major issue: if the arc is going to be for level 30-54, then the custom group needs to *at least* give 75% XP at level 50 (otherwise the arc needs a lower level limit). So either the customs need to have more attacks added, or the arc’s level range should be tweaked. (IMO, aiming for 90% XP at level 50 is what I prefer). For what it’s worth, I was using a level 50 brute (level shifted to 51), and set to 0/x5, and the custom group was *very* easy. Granted, part of that is the character’s power level, but keep in mind that you’ve got a lot of stuff with negative energy powers in the custom group, and that’s a weakness in my character’s defenses – but, since they all only seemed to have one or two attacks tops, they could never even make a dent in my health. I wasn’t totally clear on why are they all wearing joker masks… is that a ‘Cult thing’?

And then one other thing that I considered fairly major: To be honest, I just didn’t buy into one of the main elements of the arc: that opening a dimensional portal would spell doom to earth. Presumably with all of this money, and all of these research scientists at her disposal, Voidfire would have researched the dimension she intended to open the portal to before doing so – after all, wouldn’t she need to make sure the dimension her followers were fleeing to wouldn’t have some property that was inherently toxic to Kheldians? So it’s very hard to buy Brightstar’s assertion that Voidfire’s portal tech represents a deadly threat to us simply because it opens the risk of a dimensional invasion (again, I don’t buy she’d go to all this trouble, but then blindly open a portal to a random dimension and ‘hope it works out for the best.’) I think there really needs to be some other in-story reason why the portal is a bad idea. For example: Brightstar shows the schematics to Portal Corp, and they determine that the method being used to open the portal could cause some serious local instabilities in the space-time continuum, and if a very large number of people went through, it could actually collapse into a black hole that would destroy the Earth – that’d actually give even more motivation to stop Voidfire, to be honest; her motivations go from relatively neutral (which makes the motivation to stop her somewhat lacking) to much darker (she doesn’t care what happens to all of us, just as long as her people escape).

So, in summary, I think the story is actually a neat idea for an arc (and the custom group has a lot of promise), but, in my opinion, it needs some improvements to get there.


Score: 2.25

And now for the next installment in the Continuing Adventures of Pro Payne!

Krusaders Adventures (Arc ID#475115; 3 stars)

Today’s adventure starts with my decision to access the Krusaders ‘autonomous expert system.’ While in the process of checking my clearances (evidently it is assumed my supergroup is in a coalition with the Krusaders or a similar ‘allied’ setup), it receives a priority emergency message. The winter horde is attacking Skyway city. My help is needed!

The computer tells me that a member of the Krusaders, the ‘ice alien’ Krystal, is already on the scene. I head over to Skyway, track her down (the computer’s ‘clue’ as to where to find her really helped cut down on the time involved in doing that). Once I found her, she told me that some sort of artifact was spurring on the attack of the Winter Horde – we needed to find the artifact and destroy it.


Fire vs. Ice – The Eternal, Epic Conflict.

Note: When she’s first wounded she says something to the effect of ‘lucky for me I’m resistant to cold attacks.’ The problem is that it’s very likely she’ll deliver that line right after jumping down to a lower street level, which doesn’t make much sense. It’s best to put dialog that implies she’s under enemy attack no ‘higher’ than at 75% health entry – it’s hard to get a boss down to 75% just from random falls, so it’s much more likely she’ll say that line in the middle of a fight, which (I suspect) was your intent.

Naturally, I scoured the map for a bit with Krystal in tow, but didn’t really find the artifact until I returned to the area near where I rescued her (if that’s pretty typical for this map, you might want to have Krystal mention that it should be nearby, or something similar).

Comments: To be honest, the first mission is kind of boring – there really isn’t much of a story yet (Krystal’s report is the only clue, and it’s two lines long). There’s actually not much to do, and a rather big map to explore. What this mission could really use is a lot more detail. I’d suggest thinking of several optional ‘details’ to spread around the map to help make the mission into more of a story. Giving a few of the patrols some dialog wouldn’t hurt either (you should still leave most of them ‘silent’ or the mission will spam the player with identical walls of text, but a couple of patrols, each with different things to say, would really add more flavor to the mission).

Once the artifact was destroyed, I returned the rubble to the AES. It promised to start studying it, and this rather tersely ordered me to Mercy Isle to deal with a snake attack (I think I needed to rescue someone, but I was somewhat taken aback by how pushy AES had suddenly become; you think it’d be programmed to be a bit more polite, rather than bluntly ordering me around. I’m not even a Krusader, for gosh sakes…)

Heroes aren’t exactly welcome in the Rogue Isles, so I thought it wise to stay concealed until I got to the Snake cave. Once inside, I fought my way through a small number of snakes before finding the Krusader who was already sent here to help: an archer named Golden Shaft.

Evidently, Golden Shaft was trying to rescue a captive when he was caught, because a very large group of Snakes was guarding them both (actually just both spawns right on top of each other). The captive remarked that the Snakes had captured another captive further in – one that, for some unexplained reason, they appeared to be considerably more interested in. We set out to find her.


Hmm … you know, Golden Shaft actually looks just a little bit like me. Not in any sort of ‘long lost brothers’ kind of way. It’s just … well … he has my smile.

A bit further in I stumbled across a giant snake egg; although I was more keen on defeating the Snakes guarding the thing, Shaft took it on himself to nuke the egg, bringing a whole horde of angry Snakes down on us. After that little debacle, I had him wait at the entrance while I explored the rest of the nest solo.


I don’t care if PETA objects – I’m turning you all into boots! (Groan … could that joke have *been* any lamer?!)

I did find the second captive (Note: You can add some more flavor to the mission by given them actual names, but that’s just a minor suggestion). She really couldn’t offer up any reason why they were more interested in her, so I headed further in.

I found a stone altar near the back of the nest. Even attacking it seemed to enrage the Snakes – but they calmed down and lost interest in me the moment I destroyed it. I was beginning to sense a trend.

If I was right, pretty soon I’d be getting a report of another attack, and would find another artifact driving the attacking criminals to madness…

And lo and behold, no sooner did I deliver the smashed remnants of the Snakes’ artifact to the AES, I got a report that a sea platform just off Sharkhead Isle had come under attack by Sea Monsters. Hmm … the Rogue Isles again. I’m thinking if the next attack is also in the Isles, I’d best break out the Evil Pro Payne costume, just to blend in a bit better.

Once at the platform, I quickly gathered that the ‘Sea Monsters’ were actually Hydra. The AES had told me to be on the lookout for Guardian – another Krusader, and the first on the scene.

I slinked through the Isles, made it to the platform, and proceeded to rescue the three captive workers who didn’t escape the initial Hydra assault. I also found Guardian. The workers begged me to save their foreman, which I did. That was a good move, since the foreman was able to confirm my suspicions – the attack had started when they’d dredged up an artifact that had driven the Hydra into a frenzy.


Today, the Rogue Isles owe Pro Payne much – for his efforts here have saved them from being overrun by hordes of stinking sewer beasts.

I could only hope that it wouldn’t be too long before AES figured out the link between these artifacts.

While the computer thanked me for delivering the crushed Hydra artifact, it didn’t yet have an answer for me. Instead it presented me with another alert – the Tuatha were attacking in Croatoa, and had kidnapped a mystic. I was told to meet a blaster named Protector there, rescue the mystic, and put down the threat. I figured that meant find the artifact that I *knew* had to be there getting the Tuatha all riled up, and destroy it.

Turns out I was wrong. While I went to the “Caves of the Tuatha” and found Protector (who seemed to have odd issues keeping up with me), I found no evidence of an artifact. Instead, I located the mystic, and escorted her safely out of the cave: apparently, the mystic’s abductors had ‘picked her up’ and then delivered to the Tuatha. I wasn’t sure why she’d been either (1) abducted, or (2) delivered to the Tuatha, but she gave me a very obvious clue as to who her original abductors were – her description fit the 5th Column to a tee.


A rare moment where Pro Payne has inadvertently fought dirty – this Tuatha will not forget the burn for a long, long time…

And so the pieces came together … the AES had made the ‘leap’ in assuming the 5th Column were behind the artifacts in the other three attacks, and cross referenced a spectroscopic materials analysis with shipping logs from known 5th Column strongholds (I guess to see where the raw materials that went into the artifacts had been shipped to?). In any case, I had little doubt that if I headed over to the stronghold, I’d find out what the Column was up to (and why they needed to kidnap a mystic and deliver them to the Tuatha in addition to all of this artifact nonsense…)

Oh … and a whole mess load of Krusaders would be there to help me. I suspected that meant I had a major fight on my hands.

I arrived at the 5th Column stronghold and wound my way through halls full of red and black clad fascists, rescuing members of the Krusaders along the way.


Looks like this job’s going to need a team of eight!

By the time I found a computer that held the ‘master plan’, I’d recruited a veritable army of Krusaders. Which, evidently, was actually *part* of the master plan. I hacked a computer terminal, which somehow activated the PA system. In classic, cheesy 60s villain style, the mastermind of the whole evil plot taunted me – telling me that I’d fallen for his evil scheme: to wear down the Krusaders with these rapid-fire attacks (“rapid fire attacks” = setting artifacts to cause other villains to ‘swarm’, creating problems the Krusaders would be all too eager to solve) before luring them here to finish them.

It took some searching, but ultimately we located the Arch-Villain (who, thankfully was reduced to Elite Boss status for me – although, to be fair, I actually wonder if I could have taken him as a full AV given the sheer amount of boss help I had). Honestly, I’m not normally a big fan of excessive ambushes, but with all the hero support, it worked pretty dang well – the fight rapidly degenerated into a rather entertaining free-for-all with my allies fighting off hordes of 5th Column goons while I tried to defeat the AV (whose name was Flotsam, by the way).


Luckily, Pro Payne narrowly dodges a deadly blast of lightning from Flotsam. The fact the Arch Villain is currently on fire is a sign the fight isn’t going all that well for him.

I don’t think I need to tell you we won. Flotsam went down, his plot foiled. The Krusaders heaped accolades onto me for my invaluable help in bringing the villain down. I bid them farewell, and moved on to the next thing… (which will apparently take a while, since it looks like the next couple of reviews will feature Perturbation.)

Note: Without a doubt, the last mission was the highlight of the arc – deliberate or no, my normal objection to high difficulty (or excessive) ambushes in the midst of deadly boss fights was more than satisfied by the very large number of allies available to take the heat off. And by the AV fight I’d already ditched nearly half of ‘em (not intentionally – I was just to lazy to go back and fetch them when they got snagged on scenery). I honestly think the first step to improving this arc will be to make the earlier missions as engaging as the final one.

So, with that to start, I’m sorry to say I had some issues with this one. But first, let me start with the good.

Pros: From the standpoint of gameplay, that last mission was fun. Yeah, I had a lot of allies sharing the glory with me (read, “stealing my valuable XPs”), but I’m level 50, so who cares? I liked ‘em, and they seemed to have a lot more personality than in the earlier missions. In a sense, the author was true to their goal of putting together an arc that follows the stated format (see earlier in the thread) – seemingly unrelated missions each featuring a hero of the Krusaders supergroup. Only at the end do we find that the ‘adventures’ are related, and the mastermind behind the plot is uncovered…

…and now comes the criticism. Brace yourself – take it in small doses, and realize I want this to be helpful, not a bummer. (And remember, I’m not an expert in making anything good – I can just offer ideas, and hope they give you ideas for improvements.)

Cons: I’ll move to specifics in a bit. But for now, the general ‘gist’ of my criticism – the first part of the arc feels ‘phoned in’ – the ‘chapters’ are basically the same mission repeated three times. But that’s not needed to establish the finale. After all, the archvillian’s stated goal was to ‘wear down’ the Krusaders with a rapid-fire series of ‘crises.’ But nothing says each crisis has to be a repeat of the previous one - It’d be so much more interesting if they weren’t all the same ‘crises.’ IMO, each ‘crisis’ should be a story in its own right, and weave into them some clues that hint at a common source to what, on the surface, appears to be disparate problems.

The fourth mission struck me as the weakest point – it’s only purpose seemed to literally be to link the first three missions to the 5th Column, explaining where that fifth mission was coming from. But there didn’t seem to be any real background, beyond the 5th Column seeming to give the Krusaders random busywork just to wear them down.

To a lesser extent that was also a problem with the early appearance of the Krusaders – for an arc that is supposed to ‘introduce’ them (or at least give you a chance to adventure along side them), they don’t seem to have much personality until the final mission. Granted – some of said personality was probably lost because of the fact they typically never got hurt, but expanded rescue dialog, more fleshed out rescue ‘clues’ and perhaps even running comments from patrols or optional objectives (which, as I’ve already mentioned would really do a lot to make the first four missions a lot more interesting) would really help bring the Krusaders alive.

As far as making the first more missions more interesting, consider this: four villain bosses have been scheming to cause problems. Each has been slowly working on a ‘master plan.’ But each is missing a key ingredient to their plan. If some ‘benefactor’ was to deliver that ‘key’ to each villain at the same time, the Krusaders would have some major “fires” to put out – and all at the same time.

A “cold” villain wants to freeze Skyway City solid. He’s made a deal with the Winter Horde, and gathered large numbers of minons, but to really pull of the plan, he needs the Snow Pearl – a seemingly minor artifact in MAGI possession that could greatly increase the cold powers of the Horde. But a group of mysterious assailants attack the MAGI vaults and deliver the Snow Pearl to the villain. You have to help Krystal get it back – while searching for clues as to how the villain got his hands on it (revealing that he’s got a ‘mysterious benefactor.’)

Meanwhile, a horrid biological catalyst has been delivered into the hands of a nest of Snakes in the Rogue Isles. Golden Shaft has been covertly fighting the Snakes in mercy for a long time, and is very concerned about rumors of this drug, which makes the bites of the Snakes far more effective at mutating their victims into more of their kind. In the process of helping Golding Shaft destroy the stores of the catalyst, you also find evidence that links the delivery of the catalyst to whomever delivered the Snow Pearl to the “cold” villain earlier that day.

… and so on. Make each mission *distinct* - each one is a new story, with a Krusader who has been researching the problem for some time (makes them more deeply invested in the story), and your participation helps each Krusader uncover the fact that each ‘plot’ was missing one key ingredient – which seems to have been conveniently delivered to each group in rapid succession.

By the end, the Krusaders have tracked down the location of whomever has been ‘enabling’ the other villain groups – and have headed to the base to put a stop to it, only to find that it’s a trap. Giving each villain group the exact thing they needed to move ahead with their plan was really only intended to give the Krusaders some major problems to solve, using up their resources, while simultaneously directing them to this final location so Floatsam could hit them full force while they were still “depleted”, and eliminate them once and for all.

I hope that it’s clear that what I’m suggesting is no so much a re-write – as a major ‘expansion’ of your idea; a chance to flesh it out with a lot more detail (something I think the arc could really benefit from) to get the player involved and engaged.

At the moment, I think the arc needs a lot more, but hopefully my suggestions will get your imagination fired up on story elements you could use to really beef up the arc!

Score: 2.745

The Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City (5 stars)

What I liked: Hey, it's a fun arc. The missions are straightforward and put together well; several missions make good use of chained objectives (didn't even have to backtrack once). The whole arc has a kind of 'campy' feel to it that I really enjoyed. I liked the use of custom bosses to add variety to the 5th Column and the Council. Well done! Very good arc!

I guess if I have to complain: Not much to complain about - and everything I can think of is minor, nitpicky type stuff. The Professor's dialog at the very beginning seemed a bit strange (it had an almost 'newscast/narrator' type quality to it, but then he gets somewhat more conversational as the arc moves on). The whole setup with Pistola was a bit confusing, but only until I got to the end of the mission - I'm not sure I'm correct about this, but is it right to call him a Council 'rogue agent'? Doesn't that imply he used to be Council then went rogue? I figured he was really more like a mercinary working with the Council, and had rather questionable loyalty... And one last nitpick - the Prof. refers to the 5th having the chemical weapons as 'making the Black Death look like chicken pox'. I know it's stupidly nitpicky, but Black Death (or any 'pox') would imply biological, not chemical warfare - and the story implies chemical arms. Seems like it'd be better to say something more like 'makes Sarin seem like pepper spray' ... or something like that.

Again, great job! Enjoyed the arc!