Coulomb2

Updates: May 20th

*Fixed some typos.

*Added a patrol to the front of Mission 2. The intent is to make it very clear the Rebels attack heroes on principle, so it's morally okay to beat up on them.

*Although it unfolds behind the scenes in the contact text, the arrest of the pawn shop owner, and his interrogation by the police, now happens over several missions. He now reveals a little more detail about what Earth First wanted with the bomb (it's also revealed in a later arc, but it does leave one less 'loose end' in this arc to be tied up in the sequels).

*Warning text added to mission three, for the optional EB.

*The escorts for missions four and five are now non-combat. This is to keep them from getting killed (plus, the Mission Five escort is a little overpowered - as is, it doesn't make any sense why he'd even need your help to get back to the map entrance). The "damage control" text for mission fail was getting outdated anyway, given previous updates to the arc, and it freed up some space for other tweaks.

On the 'to-do' list for the next editing pass:

*More typo fixes. ('Destroys' instead of 'Destroyes' on a clue in Mission 2)

*Add warning text for the optional EB in mission 4. (Oversight - makes no sense to warn about an EB in 3, but not in 4, even if both are optional)

*Minor text change in one of the Assault Leader's dialog to better reflect his contempt for heroes.

*(If I can figure out what to drop to free up file space) Add a bit of text to the mission three debrief indicating 'someone' will take care of any 5th column you opt to leave behind in the base in mission 3.

You're in luck! I just updated Future Imperfect with several feedback-inspired tweaks (thanks for the detailed critique Eva!). Included in them is a nice big red warning that there may be an EB/AV in mission three, and that, while he's optional, you may want to bring a team if you want to fight him. I agreed with Eva that even though he's optional, there should be warning text anyway (she pointed out he might spawn right in front of a required objective - and would be an AV if the diff was set to Inv).

So don't sweat it - you're not the first person to not realize the EB in that mission is optional (Eva did, for the record, but I've gotten other comments that made it clear the player didn't realize its an optional fight).

Argh. That does remind me that there *is* an EB in the fourth mission two. He's also optional, but, for consistency, there should be warning text for him too... I'll fix that on my next editing pass.

Hey Telstar, do you remember the typo you found? I coulda sworn I'd written it down, but I just can't find where I made the note.

Eva:
Sounds good! Looking forward to the feedback!

And to Shadowrush:
I've added them to the queue!

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Oh good. The custom group is pretty much all set to Standard, all smash/lethal/energy damage without heavy debuffs or mezzing, they're not meant to be too tough, it's the AV I worry about. The last patch gave him Total Focus, on Standard, at level 25. He does more damage than he used to, my own test Scrapper had to guzzle insps to win.

Ok, I don't owe you, but I'll run it anyway. People who give other people feedback and exposure in these review threads deserve at least something in return, IMO.

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Thanks! I do appreciate it!

I actually did my standard "EB/AV" prep - I hit about 3 reds, ate 2 purples, a break free (in case he could knock me back), and an orange or two. As expected, my opening volley packed quite a whallop, and he quickly decided to run. I cornered him and finished him off.

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I'm glad both that you enjoyed Fighting Freedom and that it wasn't too difficult at level 23. How was the final fight?

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Liberty's Son managed to strike me with one of his less damaging attacks, and missed with something that looked like it would have really hurt. He went down after that - not only did my Webmaster ally hit him with something that seemed strangely vicious for a lt (although I do know he was a scaled down boss), I'd popped about three reds and hit build up *and* criticaled him with my most damaging attack.

I can see how with a little less luck it might have been a very different fight, but the way it went, I didn't have any trouble at all.

Actually, a good custom group isn't a put off at all - although early on I did find the preponderance of custom groups in arcs made me miss some of the familiar faces - so don't worry about that.

If you're curious, what I tend to rate down on:

Custom groups where the minions, specifically, have a wide variety of debuffing or control powers. There's nothing like having your damage resistance dumped into the toilet while you've been immobilized and your power recharge tanked to -10 million percent by a bunch of web grenades; not that it matters since you can't use your powers anyway, since you have no endurance thanks to all of the electric attacks, and even if you did have endurance, you couldn't hit anyone because your to-hit rating is 3% thanks to multiple stacking dark miasma powers on top of a radiation infection or two. *Sigh* (For the record, the opposite isn't true - while it *can* get excessive, buffs or heals on the bad guys isn't nearly so bad as my own abilities getting debuffed into uselessness). Although I do recommend avoiding situations where every single lt. in the group has some sort of build up or aim type power.

EDIT: Oh, and I do actually except that people following this thread will realize that I'm a fire/fire scrapper. So I might not respond particularly well to someone asking me to play through a mission that turns out to be filled with mobs decked out with cold attacks and fire armor set to extreme.

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I realized I owe you a play and some feedback, based on an earlier post you made, so I will do that some time in the next few days.

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I'm honest if anything: I'd be thrilled at any honest playthrough, feedback, and rating of my arcs (although the last two won't be around for much longer), but you do not owe me one for the review. You met the "already been reviewed and did nothing to indicate you were into revenge-rating" criterion. Based on that, I was confident you would not 0-star me had I found lots of problems with your arc and posted a much harsher review.

Oh, as a brief FYI, you did mention that you recommended that I wait for the late 20s to try out the arc (and I would have, in fact, simply quit out, not rated it, and waited to replay it until the late 20s had I found it far too difficult). I thought you'd want to know that I found it scaled just fine at level 23 - at least for a scrapper (even one with fire and its annoying immobilization and knockback holes).

As requested, feedback for #122274: The Second Coming of the Mega Mech (5 stars).

I've been very pleased with the number of arcs that I've found to be very high quality and fun to play - especially because (let's face it) not everyone who thinks they're a good writer actually is, OR some authors might have good ideas, but don't seem to think good grammer and spelling is important (I'm not talking about the occasional grammer or spelling error - I'm talking about authors where every other clip of text has something wrong...). So to have a string of arcs that are well done, with good use of English, is something I'd like to thank the community for. And this arc is one of them.

Pros: While I found this arc's start to be a bit rough (I'll talk more about that in "cons"), I certainly thought it more than made up for it in the end. While it does rehash an old story, it adds a really neat new twist in the form of a custom group that I thought was very well done: the Cult of the Mega-Mech is very well designed. It took no suspension of disbelief to see these fanatics as ex-Council who'd joined a quasi-religious splinter group: the costumes stuck me as very 'Council' in style, but modified in a way that perfectly suggested "secretive religious kook." Actually making a custom group seem like it could have thematically come from its parent group, and yet look distinctive in their own right is hard to do, but this author did a good job. Another thing I liked, that can probably be chalked up to something beyond the author's control (but that I liked anyway), is the use of the maps. See, I'm not an obligate TF runner - I'm a soloer who likes a good story. As a result, I often don't get to enjoy some of the more unique TF maps, because the current order of the day in TFs seems to be race through the thing as fast as humanly possible. This MA arc ended up being a fun opportunity for me to just admire some of the unique maps from the Hess Task Force, without some extremely impatient team leader getting mad at me for wanting to stand and gawk. Oh, and I did certainly note that the quasi-religious nature of what turned out to be the main villain group of the arc give the "second coming" reference in the arc's title (and the religious feel of the mission titles) more significance. Nice touch!

Cons: Here were my main criticisms - just a few, and I hope you find them useful. The very first mission is a bit rough around the edges, IMO, and has the weakest story elements. Specifically:

1. The contact's introductory briefing has her telling me to "stop looking at her like that" in response to something she had just said. In general I think putting implied thoughts in a "PC's" head is a very risky thing to do: it only works if the player was basically thinking what his character is supposed to be thinking anyway. And if that had happened with me, I wouldn't even be mentioning this. But it didn't work for me, since I didn't have any real reaction to what the contact said that spawned the "stop looking at me like that" comment.

2. I did want a little more backstory behind Burkholder - who is largely present in the story to just get beat up in the first mission. The story just assumes he escaped prison (not a stretch in and of itself, but I would have been happier if there was at least some nod as to how exactly he escaped - got out in the great Destined One breakout, was freed in a massive Council assault on the Zig that prompted the contact to call me on her emergency line, or whatever), and then the fact that he just goes right back to the factory to build his giant robot is, well, kinda boring. It's the old plot, without the benefit of the twist that's coming up (which certainly, IMO, saves the story). In fact, I really thought the story might have even been better if Burkholder hadn't been in it at all. "We checked. Burkholder's still holed up in the Zig. So why have we been seeing all these shipments going into that factory? And now, suddenly the door is locked, and we've lost contact with one of our Council informants. I'm getting a really bad feeling about all of this, and I'd like for you to check out that factory and see what's going on."

Granted, it's just my opinion, but it does seem to me that that setup is considerably more suspenseful, and would absorb you into the story better than "Well, nuts. Burkholder did his obligatory four seconds in the Zig before his inevitable escape, and now he's back working on his robot. Beat him up for me."

3. In the first mission debrief, there's a reference to Hess and "some group he'd sent into the factory" that seemed out of place. Perhaps I'm being hopelessly dense, but I wasn't sure if that was supposed to refer to the original "play" of the Hess Task Force - or if Hess had just ordered a bunch of people into the factory. In either case, the reference to Hess didn't seem necessary.

Summary: A great arc that starts out just a little weak, story-wise, in the beginning, but more than makes up for it by the end. A solid five stars.

An update from the world of Pro Payne.

Upon reaching level 22, Pro Payne actually made use of the "dual builds" feature in what I think was a rather novel way, in what I like to call:

A Way Around The Unceasing Agony Of Only Having Vet. Powers
For those of you following "the story" - you'll know Pro Payne doesn't use his fire powers outside of MA missions (unless I forget to toggle off his armor by accident or something) - take a gander at his first post if you want to know more. The only missions he does outside of MA are the scanner missions he needs to unlock a Safeguard at each appropriate level range, to get that useful temp. power.

That the whole "out of MA" experience has gone downhill did not come as a surprise - I was expecting to dread the runs to get those Safeguard temps, and what a way to really drive home Pro Payne extreme preference to return to MA as fast as humanly possible. What did come as a surprise was just how fast relying on brawl, ghost axe, nem. staff, and blackwand (and his throwing knives), with no armor, started getting very lethal: I had figured the game was balanced in a way that would have made that play style agonizingly slow, but doable if I was very careful. What I learned is that by level 10 a typical lt. and minion spawn had a pretty good chance of doing me in.

By level 20, I found myself seriously considering either giving up that "concept" aspect of Pro Payne, and letting him use his fire powers in 'out of MA' missions, OR just giving up on getting the rest of Safeguard temp powers. Then, an interesting solution to the problem that also had a rather neat "side benefit" occured to me.

Pro Payne has been adventuring in MA for some time now - he may not have superpowers in the outside world, but there'd be no doubt that his physical fitness level would have greatly improved (at least if you assume that MA is sort of holodeck like, and his body is getting all of the normal benefits of running everywhere, taking swings at foes, etc.)

So, Pro Payne's alternal "outside" build incorporates "concept friendly" pool powers, things like Boxing, Kick, Tough, Jump Kick, Swift, Health, Stamina, etc. Nothing that attempts to go too far in the direction of "super" (e.g. Teleport, Whirlwind, etc.) - but at least powers that (with perhaps a minor stretch of the imagination) you could imagine a highly trained martial artist or boxer might have. Although I don't have them yet, there's no reason Pro Payne couldn't "acquire" powers that are obviously technological (such as Aid Self, where it's clear that Pro Payne is using technology to heal a wound, not some inherant superpower).

It's been fun in the sense that I've gotten to try out several pool powers I wouldn't otherwise give a second glance to (and still wouldn't for some, except for the fact they're significantly better than no character powers at all).

Missions outside of MA are still significantly harder, but at least I'm not facing the prospect of needing to run to a contact to stock up on inspies after each fight (or, gasp, actually *failing* a Safeguard, and needing to replay the scanner missions to get another one).

Also...

Being A Hero Requires Tenacious Work
Pro Payne has now officially set his difficulty to Tenacious, so as to allow Bosses to be Bosses, and EBs and AVs to be EBs. It's been in the plan all along, once Pro Payne got access to SOs, and something I can say I highly recommend for any others trying the "level up a character entirely in MA" route - since there's no such thing as an XP mission bonus, this more than doubles your XP per mission (not to mention that for a scrapper, heroic post SOs is usually way too easy).

Still, I do feel compelled to repeat an observation I've made before, lest any Devs be rummaging through this arc (yeah, right)... every time I switch away from heroic, I always wish more than anything that there was an option or options that allowed you to directly control the "rank down" code independent of mission difficulty. I would LOVE to be able to have bosses, EBs, and even the option of AVs spawn "normally", even at heroic. There are many characters I'd just keep on heroic, if only I could actually have real bosses in mission (I've had many characters that I started that game set to difficultly two or three just so that bosses would stay bosses, even though I didn't *want* that added difficulty caused by increased spawn size or upped spawn level).

Okay, on to today's review... (which will be in the next post.)

Played three arcs today - and only made it halfway through my current level; it's very clear I'm going to need LOTS of arcs to play, so keep those suggestions coming.

(By the way, so far it's been a bang-up start ... I liked all three of todays arcs, and rated each one five stars. I really thought 1709 stood out - I can heartily recommend that one as a "must play")

Oh, and I do watch the MA Arc Finder global channel for advertised arcs (and ... heh ... am more than willing to plug my own there too) - so promote your arcs there too from time to time. I can tell you at least one player is plucking arcs for his MA character to try from there...

Arc #1033 – Wool Over One’s Eyes (Rated 5 stars)

Okay, as promised, here is some more specific feedback:

In the first mission briefing, the green (and enlarged text) “runs into” the white, normal-sized text that follows it – adding (another?) space to separate them would be good.

Although the first mission is a “surprise timed” mission, it doesn’t really detract from the arc (since, theoretically, the player could just quit out and restart to reset the timer, without ever having played any part of the arc), and I didn’t “grade down” because of it. Still, just for completeness and polish you may want to consider adding some prior warning it’s a timed mission – yes, I agree it’s absolutely unnecessary, but sometimes we players appreciate unnecessary stuff…

There was a typo in the mission two briefing … should be “the buildings are marked for destruction.” Likewise, after you accept the mission, the send off text has a little part that doesn’t make sense: “there should beif you find it” … perhaps a comma and a space to separate ‘be’ and ‘if.’

Mission 3 was the first time I noticed that there seemed to be a mix-up in which group in a battle was saying the text – I’d recommend you recheck all of your battles carefully and make sure that you’ve got each group’s text assigned to the proper group (i.e. there were several instances of Group A saying text that sounded like it belonged to Group B, and vice versa.)

In Mission 4 there’s an asterisk in the mission briefing text, but no “footnote” or anything else that I could see that adds into the asterisk. Was it supposed to refer to something that wasn’t put into the text?

Also, Bosco should probably say “no hard feelings about before.”

Okay, and now on to…

#2085 (4 stars … and still BOO onto me as I haven’t looked up the arc’s title… I just couldn’t give this one five – there were too many typos and technical errors – this time bad enough to actually make parts of the arc seem confused - but hopefully I can help with that.)

Okay, I think this is in mission one: The mission wants you to “defeat Sister Jenna” – yet in the mission it is Operative Felix (which doesn’t seem right for the Knights of Artemis in any case … “Operative” actually implies Arachnos).

Take a careful look at the mission two briefing – there were just plain parts that I didn’t follow – probably related to several typos or “writing errors”:

1) Why would I need backup *after* I’m done with the mission?
2) There’s a reference to the “other Meta” – what Other Meta? It was almost like there was some foreshadowing of a future mission (or a deleted mission objective) that I shouldn’t have been privy to…

Gator refers to Felix as a him, although Felix (Jenna?) was actually female.

Also, after finding the correct computer to hack in that mission, I think you meant the text to read “You found the information.”

There’s also a reference to “salvaged gear” – even though no in-mission glowies had me salvaging gear (at least that I remember) … I assumed you might be referring to normal enhancement drops and salvage (or, if this arc is really intended for your supergroup, perhaps some rule for taking stuff from your group’s storage that the typical player isn’t privy too), but briefing references like this that have no connection to something that actually happened in the mission can be a little confusing.

And, just FYI, I certainly saw why “I might need a team” for mission three, but I wasn’t so sure why it would have been necessary for mission two … maybe I missed something, but there just didn’t seem to be anything that I would have needed a team to get past, even if I had been on a much squishier character.

Other miscellaneous typos I’d recommend you do a very careful read-through to catch and correct:

*Watch for the correct use of “a” versus “an.”
*You’ve got some sentence beginnings that need to be capitalized.
*Be careful with pronouns – it’s very easy to make what a pronoun is referring to overly vague, which can make your mission text confusing.

Okay, one last bug: Catalina 6.7 is actually in the “All Custom Characters” faction – if you want to change that, be sure to Edit Character and re-set her faction in the “Character Bio/Description” screen.

Whew! I tried to give you significantly more thorough feedback than usual because I really did appreciate you trying out my arc. I hope it’s helpful!

Since it's actually the "lowest level" arc for my queue, I've placed it at the top - The plan is to play it on Pro Payne tomorrow, and to work my way down the queue in order (roughly).

By the way, my current queue is (and they're arranged roughly in order of the minimum level I'll be while playing them):

177930
1709
2220
84420
122274 (requested review)
5073
51728 (requested review)
2922
1567
3326
1356

We'll see where that gets Pro Payne!

Thank you very much for the comments! I'm very happy you liked the arc, and am looking forward to any comments and feedback for the other two.

Here are "quickies" about the two of yours I played. I'm writing up more complete reviews in word, and I'll post them when I finish them (probably next week).

#1033 Wool Over One's Eyes (5 stars)
Interestingly, although marked as heroic, I actually didn't feel terribly out of place playing it as a villain. Neat use of formatted and colored text throughout, and an interesting story - any story that makes me want to keep accepting the next mission to see where this goes is a good one. Neat twist making the "finale" actually the second to last arc - it was satisfying to get to chase down and defeat the guy who'd been leading me on. A few typos, and several minor (non mission-breaking bugs) - most notable, cases where battle dialog is "mixed up" (e.g. a Council member spouts Freakshow lines, a Freakshow says the Council guy's lines). Got some more specific examples for the longer review.

#2085 (4 stars; didn't write down the title...)
Fun, good arc - had more issues with technical errors (typos, etc.) for this one: I think it needs a little more work to clean up some of the bugs than the previous arc. There were some places where there were "disconnects" between the mission text and what's happening in the mission itself (like you had an idea for the mission, changed your mind or adjusted some of the objectives, but didn't alter the briefings to reflect the changes) - it made parts of the mission confused. Made a more complete list; I'll post it here later.

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Yeah, the only thing you really need to worry about is the EB at the end. He hits like a truck.

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Yeah, the rest of the arc could be soloed by a kitten. I've never had trouble with the end EB, but then again I'm a lover of lucks and just down them like pez before those kinds of battles. I soloed it with a Blaster who basically has Rise of the Phoenix in her attack chain and didn't die once, so I don't think the difficulty is too high as long as you know what you're doing and are forewarned (and I spell it out in the mission text, too).

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I have a similar strategy - if I know a difficult EB is coming, I load up on purples (which is why I'm such a big proponent of warning the player when they're about to start a mission with a required EB). The only time I grade arcs down for EBs is if I end up facing the notorious situation where I've soft-capped my defense, added some extra resistance for that lucky shot or two, laid into the EB, died quickly, and barely dented the EBs health. And even that doesn't reduce the rating (hey, sometimes the bad guys just get lucky) - that has to have happened several times in a row on the same boss before I chalk it up to really bad balance and rate the arc down.

No need to worry, for I do have SO's now (see my earlier "progress" posts). I'll add your arc to the queue as soon as it's published. I've already added General Zod's ... er I mean Geek_Boy's.

I've got three arcs written specifically for low level play (they're not the ones in my sig!).

They are:
#100304: Learning The Ropes
#115935: Cracking Skulls
#124906: The Lazarus Project

Take 'em for a spin and tell me what you think!

If you want a glimpse at Pro Payne's current status, just read the previous post. Here are some of my "along the way" observations.

Having played through all of the low level arcs people had suggested, Pro Payne hit an interesting lull. He still has a decent "to do" list, but they are all arcs that would scale him up to level 25 or higher, and that was something he wanted to avoid until reaching 22 and SOs (For me, my character actually feels weakest around 20 and 21, when my last batch of DOs is getting pretty outdated, just before you get the huge boost SOs provide, and the game's pacing and 'fun factor' suddenly go way up again).

There are remarkably few MA arcs (at least with good searchable tags) that cater specifically to characters in the very early 20s (most of the 'MLMA' arcs have at least a few missions that "auto-sk" you up to 25, 30, or even higher), so the last two levels for Pro Payne have been the roughest.

He's been doing lots of arcs based on random searches, and has been forced to take on lots of arcs with nothing but custom groups (in the, often futile hope, that the groups are decently balanced for a 20-21st level character) - yeah, I could have started hitting my "22+ queue", but I really want to enjoy those arcs as much as possible, and so I've been saving them for post SO to minimize frustration.

And, in doing random MA content for these past two levels, I must say I have truly come to appreciate the overall quality of the work posted by people who frequent this part of the forum, and have posted in my thread. When you've been playing 3, 4, and 5 star arcs, it's a shock to the system just how awful a 1 or 2 star arc can be.

Not that they're labelled 1 or 2 stars. The sheer number of 4 and 5 star arcs you get in random searches that are absolute drek boggles the mind. I've given out a LOT of 1 and 2 star ratings this past week, and those were for the arcs that I could actually defeat the first fight (if the first trio or duo of minions faceplanted me without me even barely denting their health - and that's assuming I was even facing a mission that *had* minions, versus ones with no plot, a field of glowies, and nothing but leutinants everywhere - or bosses; those, by the way got reported as farms). I was expecting it to be bad, but what caught me off guard was just how bad, and how many there were.

I have a renewed appreciation for those of you (and me too - shameless plug of my own arcs, down in my sig) who are writing real stories for MA, and I'm really looking forward to getting back to those arcs (and really dreading the day when I run out of them - I might have to take my own arcs down and start writing my own content for Pro Payne... yeesh.)

So keep up the good work all! (For me, finals and turning in grades are almost done, so expect to see more activity next week!)

(BTW, to Captain Awesome, I did play two of your arcs - although on another character - and I do have that promised feedback for you; I'll write it up and put it in my other thread when I get the chance - again, probably early next week).

A major milestone for Pro Payne last night: level 22, and (finally) SOs! Rejoice, for now Pro Payne plans to once again take up the queue of those higher level arcs (if you want to see what it is, or if you're on it, scroll upward; it's in an earlier post - if you want to be placed on it, post your arc ID here. If all you want is a play-thru, that's all you need; but if you want a review, please ask specifically for one, so that I can mark your arc as "review requested.")

Anyway, here's Pro Payne's current "stats", for those that are interested. I've got a few observations that I'll put in a second post after this one (lest people get too turned off by my tendency to post massive walls of text).

Now level 22, Pro Payne has 1,261,807 influence to his name. With no need to spend it on enhancements or anything else (he has tickets for that), ALL of it is bidding on a Steadfast Protection: Knockback Resistance IO. The "knockback hole" in Firey Aura is enough to make me want to set myself on fire (pun intended) - hopefully this will help, and allow Pro Payne to spend less than half a fight on his back.

He's done a total of 36 story arcs (28 are heroic arcs)
He's earned a total of 11,238 tickets, and still has 4,502 left to spend (this is *after* completely decking him out with SOs - so yes, so far the AE system has allowed me to keep my character totally up to date with whatever the best available enhancements are from among the TOs, DOs, and SOs).

He's got 47 AE badges so far, and of the "accomplishments within AE" (that are not related to authoring or testing arcs), he's only missing the last badges for "click glowies", "defeat custom foes", "destroy objects", and "inspirations."

More to come...

I've got three lowbie arcs for you that I think you might enjoy (they're hero aligned, but you said that was okay )

They're: #100304, #115935, and #124906

Enjoy!

(NOTE: These are *not* the arcs in my sig, which are high level arcs - you probably don't want to tackle those yet.)

I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and directly post my arcs up here in the hope that they'll get some attention and feedback.

The arcs are a trilogy, and intended for high level play (most missions will have you at at least level 40). The first arc is closest to being a "stand alone" arc, and they're very story driven. Pay careful attention to the mission briefings and listed mission objectives: most of the biggest combat challenges in the arc are completely optional.

Here are the arcs:
"Future Imperfect" #10931
"The Will of the Primus" #25966
"The Rise of the Primus" #71636

(Of course, they're listed in my signerature as well).

You can post feedback to this thread, or PM me - and frankly if you just want to play them, and have no interest in giving feedback, I'd appreciate that too.

Thanks!

It’s been a busy week for Pro Payne (he’s got finals, and hasn’t been able to wile away the time at AE as much), but he has managed to get several more missions under his belt. He spent some time pretending he had a sidekick (who joined the Teen Freedom Phalanx), got a terrible drug off the streets (but at a very hefty price), saved a bunch of cute little spiderlings, beat the tar out of a nutso clown, and sparred with a dangerous new technological threat called the “double helix.”

Here’s his current queue (they’re arranged in the order he intends to play them, typically from lower to higher level, but he’s waiting to get to level 22 – and SOs - before starting any of them; so for the time being he’s been searching for arcs where he can fight level 20 and 21 foes).

1709, 2220, 84420, 5073, 2922, 1567, 3326, and 1356. Remember to let me know if you want a review of your arc posted here (versus just having me play it).

Speaking of which, I promised Police Woman a review of “Teen Phalanx Forever!”

So…

#67335: Teen Phalanx Forever. (Gave it 4 stars; I'd give it 5 with some "extra plot" added to missions one and two)

Pro Payne “plays” his ‘sidekick’ (Kid Pro Payne) in this arc that depicts his adventures with the Teen Freedom Phalanx. It began with him proving he had the “right stuff” to join by helping the TFP take down Dr. Vahzilok’s latest evil plan. Next was a mission to help out his new supergroup by taking down the Clockwork King and rescuing Penelope Yin. Afterwards, Kid Pro Payne got stuck with monitor duty: his snooping around in other TFP members stuff give him a tantalizing hint that someone named “V” had it in for Citadel XP (the “teen Citadel”, naturally) – he erroneously wondered if it was Val (although he couldn’t see why that would be), but then the base was attacked by the Freakshow and Clamor, who had been hired to capture the remaining members of the TFP (Kid Pro Payne found out, after the battle, that Citadel XP and Cora – “teen Sister Psyche / Manticore” – had already been captured by this mysterious “V”). Well, V ended up being an “upgrade” of Citadel’s design based on powerful Council robotics technology – the deadly Citadel Vista! The Teen Phalanx rallied and defeated Citadel Vista before he could consign Citadel XP to the scrap heap (along with the rest of the Teen Phalanx). Unfortunately, Kid Pro Payne’s adventures ended there, as Pro Payne needed to call on his trusty sidekick’s skills for the time being. Kid Pro Payne and the Teen Phalanx parted ways, but with a standing invitation to call on the Phalanx if ever the need arose.

Pros: A solid, well-polished arc. Minimal typos (meaning there may be some, but I didn’t notice any), excellent mission design from a technical standpoint (mission #3 was particularly impressive). As advertised, the arc worked just fine for a level 19 character, although, on a personal note, I think the arc’s story (obviously) works best if you play it with an “out leveled” character to best capture the feeling that you’re really your main character’s young, inexperienced sidekick. The characters were likeable and fun to interact with. If the author’s intent was to capture the feel of those “teen hero” cartoons (or comics), this arc did a great job. Okay, so then, why not five stars?

Cons: I hate to admit it (and I apologize for any hurt feelings), but for such a well put together arc, I was rather bored – at least until the 3rd mission. I gave a lot of thought as to exactly why this is. I’m sure part of it is a little personal (those “teen hero” shows and comics never really captured my interest, even way back when I was a teen), but if that was all there was to it, I probably would have actually rated the arc 5 stars anyway. There was more to it than that:

The first two missions were on somewhat long maps that I have done many times before – and are fairly close to simply being replicas of canon missions, with the TFP inserted in. On one level, it works well – since it gives the impression that I’m helping the Teen Phalanx (for example) in *their* run to stop the Vahzilok wasting disease (Dr. Vahzilok even had mostly the same dialog) – but the problem is I’ve stopped the Vahzilok disease so many times before that (one) I’m rather bored of it, and (two) it does kind of break immersion (if “real Pro Payne” actually stopped the Vahzilok plague some time back, shouldn’t Kid Pro Payne and the TFP be stopping an all new plot?). I *may* have missed something, but I think actually adding some clues and changing some text to “flesh out” the tail-end of an all-new Vahzilok plot would be really neat (or even somehow have the Teen Phalanx members relate the stages of the “story arc” they were on prior to you getting there to help with their final battle with Dr. Vahzilok).

The clockwork mission was a variation from the finale mission in Synapse’s TF, which was good! But, again, I almost wanted more background story in here, to create the feel that I was part of foiling more of a plot than “kidnap Penelope to make her the clockwork princess” – although, on a sinister note, perhaps some “gear” that suggests the King intended to remove her brain and implant it in a clockwork body. Admittedly, that may be a bit too dark for this arc, though (and really isn’t very “canon”).

Basically, missions one and two just didn’t capture my attention as much as I wanted them to – but mission three certainly did. Heh, put me down as one of those heroes who just had to rifle through everyone’s stuff. This mission was extremely well done (and the fact it was short, and clue-intensive, was a neat diversion from the fairly long previous missions), and caught my attention again.

And, of course, that meant that (along with a somewhat shorter seeming map), I was more “invested” in the story again for the finale.

Still, I was somewhat disappointed that I never got to meet Statesboy. (Obviously I didn’t grade down for that, though) My honest opinion: with a bit of “sprucing up” of the first two missions, I’d certainly have been willing to rate this arc a solid 5 stars.

And on to another arc (I don’t believe I got a specific request to review this one, but I did want to mention it and give a bit of feedback, since I really liked the arc, but could see several places for improvement).

#156389: Kiss Hello Goodbye (4 stars, could easily be 5 with some polish)

This arc is written in a film noir / gritty detective story style, and it works really well. As I said, I really enjoyed playing it, loved the story, and the only thing keeping it from 5 stars was the need for a bit of polish (to both the flow of the missions, and a few technical details).

Most of the dialog in this arc, including “conversations” with your contact, are actually written as your own character’s “inner monologue” – some may not like that, but I certainly didn’t mind (probably because Pro Payne’s whole concept is a regular guy who like to use AE to “role play” being a hero, so he’s very willing to let the author write the character he’ll play for the arc), and it was done well.

In the arc, you’re sent by a “Dame Best” to rescue her kid sister. The kid sister is “wanted” by a dangerous drug cartel because she knows how to make a mind controlling drug called “Siren.” Only it turns out that she *is* Siren… the drug is a chemical or a pheromone (or something similar) that she exudes, and the criminals want it for themselves (and also to get it off the street). There are numerous twists and turns to the plot (all done well), and a genuinely sad ending (which is both in keeping with the theme, and a good sign: it means I actually cared about the characters).

Of course, while playing the arc, I made a list of several suggestions – this is one of those arcs I really want to see improved, as I really liked its potential.

I wasn’t totally clear on the relationship between Dame Best and Dame Eden Lake (were they the same, and if they were, then why was Ligea – sorry I’m probably misspelling her name – “Ligea Best” instead of “Ligea Lake”?) It just confused me a little.

A very minor nitpick: you might want to rename Slick Willie to something a bit less politically charged. It didn’t bother me in the least, but some folks are just jerks and will find an excuse to be bothered by something like that. Obviously this was *not* something I graded down for.

Also, and related to one of my more major suggestions: it might be useful to actually have Slick Willie give up the location of the boat in his dialog. Again, I was a bit confused as to how exactly I found out about the boat – I assumed S.W. told me based on the fact that he “gave up information”, but specifics do make the story easier to follow.

And so, my major suggestion – I do think there’s a need to make the transitions from one mission to the next a bit stronger. By that, I think it isn’t always very clear how exactly you knew where to go next (often, the dialog would hint that you’d “gotten the info”, but wouldn’t mention any specifics).

There did seem to be some odd typographical “bugs” in the dialog – Like odd spaces showing up after my name, but before punctuation marks (e.g. “Pro Payne .” or “Pro Payne ,” instead of “Pro Payne.” Or “Pro Payne,”) – I haven’t noticed that in other arcs, so I assume it has something to do with how you formatted the dialog text. (It does tend to show up in the clues as well)

There’s definitely some proofreading and editing work that needs doing – sorry, I do find making long lists of every typo I find hideously dull, so, well, I didn’t make one, but I did notice quite a few. A very careful once-over of all your mission text might help you catch a lot of those. Oh, and don’t forget: “i before e except after c.”

I believe it’s in mission 4, but in the mission where you fight Old Fossil (as opposed to him being an ally), OF’s description still made it sound like he was on your side.

Very neat arc! Thanks for suggesting it!

And now, back to the grading grind. Keep those suggestions coming!

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To GlaziusF: actually I would be interested in seeing the sequel - I'm not sure when I'm going to have time, but if the offer's still open when I find the time, I'm game. I actually do have an odd request: Triumph is my "villain" server; even though it's "out of character" running that arc in test mode would work pretty well for me (I've got a "badge" character villain, and an opportunity to work on testing badges would be welcome).


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Well, drop me a global tell, and I hope your badger's over 35 because we'll need to meet in the RWZ.

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Way ahead of you. He's level 50.

As usual, thank you to everyone for the suggestions. Every one of them has been put in my play queue (as usual, typically in an order that will best suit Pro Payne level when he plays through them).

I've played through Teen Phalanx Forever! and feedback is on the way (probably early next week).

To GlaziusF: actually I would be interested in seeing the sequel - I'm not sure when I'm going to have time, but if the offer's still open when I find the time, I'm game. I actually do have an odd request: Triumph is my "villain" server; even though it's "out of character" running that arc in test mode would work pretty well for me (I've got a "badge" character villain, and an opportunity to work on testing badges would be welcome).

Over the next week I'll be checking this thread for additional posts, and adding to my queue. I did want to let you all know I'm going to be pretty scarce for the next week - you know all those folks saying they're going to be busy with finals? I'm one of them: only on the other end - I'm one of the folks who has to make, give, and grade the finals, and that's going to keep me occipied. I'm going to try to play from time to time, but I'll probably be prioritizing arcs where the author hasn't requested feedback (for next week only).

Keep the suggestions coming!

Ask and you shall receive (although, as you'll see, I can't offer much in the way of constructive criticism, because I can't find a whole lot to criticize in this next arc...)

#1874: Dream Paper (5 stars)

The Lost were breaking into an apartment complex and a hero was needed to head them off, and figure out what they were up to. Pro Payne took up the job, and found the lost ransacking the place, apparently looking for something specific. What they were looking for was something of a surprise: some packets of powder that belonged to an old woman – Grandma Yan. Given that the Lost were actually trying to get their hands on the stuff, for a little bit Pro Payne was wondering if Yan was a pusher of “shift” (the Lost’s mutagenic drug) – a sinister wolf in sheep’s clothing. But Pro Payne was way off.

The powder wasn’t shift – but it was a controlled substance, and led Pro Payne to a local Tsoo drug operation. The Tsoo were packing up shop and getting ready to bug out (Were they tipped off?). Pro Payne shut down the operation and arrested ringleader, but promptly found out that things were not exactly what they seemed: the drug boss was Yan’s grandson, and the “drug” was just an herbal remedy. It was a false lead, although the other drugs there were not so innocuous – shutting down the drug lab may not have helped the investigation, but Pro Payne was happy to make sure some bad stuff never made it to the street.

It was unlikely the Lost were after an herbal remedy, but they were sure after something – in a bold move they raided the police lab analyzing the substance. Pro Payne pitched in to fight them off, and found something very strange: the Lost were not after the powder – they were after the paper it was wrapped it. According to the lab analysis, the paper had the ability to store psychic imprints, and could even mesmerize someone who looked at a large enough square of it. And the Lost were treating it as though it were some sort of holy scripture.

A bit of digging revealed the paper had actually come from a youth hostel – it had originally been delivered there by a troll living below Silver Lake. Pro Payne paid him a visit (fighting his way through the other trolls living in the tunnels below the lake – trolls who were not happy that the “paperboy’s” activities had led a hero to their doorstep), but the troll paperboy didn’t seem to have any real involvement in a Lost plot. He was secretly trying to “go clean”, and honestly thought he was doing the director of the hostel, Mr. Blaloch (I may be misspelling the name), a favor.

The troll paperboy gladly gave up the location of his pick up point, and, not surprisingly, it turned out to be a warehouse full of the Lost working to produce more of this “dream paper” – with the potential to mesmerize people, and even lull them into going wherever the Lost wanted them (by, for example, filling their head with the suggestion that a particular sewer entrance was “home”), the dream paper was potentially a powerful recruitment tool for the Lost, and a threat to the city. But the real surprise was the Lost’s “Prophet” – the man responsible for the whole operation: Mr. Blaloch! (Okay, actually I wasn’t that surprised – I figured it was either going to be him, or Granny Yan was going to turn out to be the one)

Oddly, Mr. Blaloch did not seem to be in control of his own actions – he was behaving as though possessed by a separate consciousness. That separate consciousness was a powerful psychic, and apparently responsible for imprinting the Dream Paper. Pro Payne, as a rule, doesn’t really like beating up old men, but the only way to stop Mr. Blaloch’s alter ego was to physically subdue the poor old man. It worked … Blaloch will recover from his injuries, and there is no trace of the consciousness left.

But that leaves one final mystery. The dream paper was not powerful enough to implant an artificial consciousness in anyone – Mr. Blaloch’s alter ego had another source, and Blaloch has no memory of it.

Pros: The work GlaziusF puts in his arcs shines through – this arc is well organized, well written, has an interesting story, and is fun to play. I really couldn’t find anything to complain about – hence the rating: if I had a good time playing an arc, really enjoyed the story, and can’t think of any concrete ways to make it better (that are strongly needed), that’s five stars in my book.

Cons: All I can put here are nitpicks – and minor ones at that. In my opinion, the weakest part of the story is the “red herring” angle in mission two, and weakest is a relative term here. There isn’t a problem with actually playing through the false lead, and the mission itself is well done, but it could also be fairly easily written out of the story altogether by having the police lab analysis immediately determine the powder is an herbal remedy, and *wham* it gets attacked by the Lost looking for the paper. As I said, the mission doesn’t hurt the story – it just doesn’t really drive it forward much in my opinion, and the most direct way to improve the arc would be to “write it out” and use the extra space to perhaps expand the story at the end (there’s certainly more that could be explored in terms of that “other consciousness” that was infecting Mr. Blaloch). The bottom line, though, is the arc is (IMO) five stars as-is and doesn’t really need to be changed: but if I was hell-bent to change something to improve the arc, that’s what I’d change. Beyond that, I didn’t notice any obvious typos in casual play, and had no problem with the writing – there really just aren’t many cons that I could find to complain about in this arc: and that’s a really good thing!

Of course, if there's no sequel planned, then I can add one final nit-pick: the arc lacks definitive closure. But the fact that I cared enough about the story to want to follow it further is certainly a Pro.

Arc 17523 – A little RnR (3 stars)

A new group of hooligans has come to town to party – but their idea of a good time could easily lead to a lot of collateral damage. Fortunately, Pro Payne was on the case, and managed to stop their rampage by putting their leader in prison (for now – he’s rich, so he’ll probably get his lawyers to spring him soon enough).

Pros: Really neat design to the custom group that dominates the arc. I loved the names. The custom foes are really the highlight of the arc, so it’s very good that they have such an interesting look and design.

Cons: Honestly, I felt like I was playing the “outline” of a story arc where the story just hasn’t been fleshed out yet. I certainly got that I’m trying to figure out who this new group is, and put a stop to them, but that practically was the extent of the story. That’s really the biggest “con” – you’ve got three “scenarios” featuring an interesting custom group, and now you just need more of a story to tie them together. Let me try to offer some specific suggestions:

1. I wasn’t really sure who exactly the contact is sending me on these missions, which makes it a tad hard to understand why he’s the one investigating this new group, and why he’s sending me on these missions in the first place. You might want to add some text having him introduce himself.
2. Such a neat set of custom mobs absolutely needs character descriptions – you can add a lot to the story just by dropping hints about who these guys are in their bios (or comments about how advanced their technology is, etc.) And I really did find myself wanting to know why they had their names – I’ve love some info in the bios as to exactly why they’re called what they’re called.
3. As much as I liked the custom mobs, they did seem a bit over the top, at least for a lowbie: a wide variety of damage types, multiple debuffers, etc. I had a particular hate-on for the sonic ones by the end: I spent many a fight with a -50% damage resistance debuff thanks to those guys, which is pretty difficult to handle since fire is a resistance based set. You might want to tone them down a bit – or perhaps warn players in the description to hold off trying the arc until they’re level 22, or something to that effect.
4. Their difficulty made the ambushes almost maddening. What I found is that I could barely handle one spawn of them – so any ambushes or anything that added more than a standard spawn would typically finish me off. Of course, being higher level or having SOs might help, but if you’re interested in making the arc more lowbie friendly, I would suggest toning down the mobs and perhaps either toning down or eliminating some of the ambushes.
5. Give more the mission objectives actual descriptive text – adds that nice extra level of polish to the arc.
6. And this is a big one – While there is a hint in the contact’s briefing that this is going to be a timed mission, I’d highly recommend that you be a lot more specific and direct in telling the player this is the case. While the time you gave was sufficient to complete the mission, you never know when a player (like me) is going to accept a mission to queue it up, while intending to take a break to (say) call his wife and eat dinner. Obviously, if it was clear it was timed, I wouldn’t have done that. Sure, you could make the argument that we probably should never accept missions unless we’re on the cusp of being ready to play them, but there are a lot of us who just don’t do it – and the world’s not fair: you’ll be the one who gets blamed (and a low rating) when the timer runs out and we fail the mission. (That isn’t what happened in this case, but it could have)

Here are a few typos I noticed – I’d recommend you do a very careful read-through, though. In general, I’ll write down the first three or four I see, but if there’s more (and there were), I’ll just mention you should do a “sweep for typos.”

In the introductory text for mission one: “every other kind of gangs” (gangs should probably be gang)

Same briefing: “The have had complaints” (not sure what that should say, it didn’t make sense in context with the rest of the briefing)

In the first mission, in one of the clues, you misspelled “shipment” as “shipement”

In the third mission briefing “questioning” is misspelled (“questionning”)

Hope the feedback helps! I can honestly say that I think this is going to be a very fun and interesting arc to play once it really gets fleshed out. I’ve made a note to try it out in the future with a higher level character, and I’m always willing to up a rating if there are improvements in the arc.

Also, I did play and rate “Cosplay Madness” – I was originally going to write up and post a review here, but Kitsune and I had a discussion online that ended up including most of the feedback (and more than a few questions) I would have put here. In all honesty, I’m pretty strapped for time, so unless she specifically requests it, I’m going to hold off.