Coulomb2

Okay, for my first Arc Club arc for October, I played 'Whack A Mole! Lambda Sector Edition!" (Arc #508837). Why? 'Cause I've actually enjoyed the Incarnate Trials (in spite of some of their shortcomings) quite a bit, and was really looking forward to seeing how the author was going to 'spoof' them.

I wasn't disappointed. Like the original Whack a Mole arc, this one was short, fast-paced, and humorous, with plenty of jabs and in-jokes at the expense of the Lambda trial. Unless otherwise noted (for example, PW mentioning she preferred her Talos Towers arc to get 'honest' ratings), I'm playing by the 5-stars or leave unrated rule; gave this one 5 stars in game (felt '4-star' for real for me, so I just went ahead and gave it 5).

Suggestions:

How about during the 'sabotage' phase, finding a 'Mole-lecular Acid' that in one of the crates that was accidentally stored in the warehouse instead of the lab? (Which you'd have no use for, since there are no reinforcement portals.)

Also, what about a Clue on mission complete that spoofs the reward table - have a couple of 'Mole-themed' rewards. Originally, I thought maybe under each reward have a 'You cannot choose this reward because you can only claim this reward once every 20 hours.' But actually making the Clue 'Mole' versions of the uncommon components would probably work just as well.

Also, how about at the end of the sabotage phase, you get an 'Astral Mole-rit' (groan; maybe you can come up with something better...) (again as a clue).

For that matter, defeating Molerauder could give you an Empyrean Mole-rit, or something.

Just some ideas to pack a bit more 'Incarnate satire' into the arc...

Ah! Thank you very much for the response to my review, Vidszhite. These are (almost) always fun to read, given that either things that I didn't "get" are explained (always useful), or I get to see that my feedback actually made a difference.

While I don't think I really caught on it was a true 'origin story,' I was always clear on the fact that Vid-Szhite was almost certainly one of your characters, and that this story revolved around "lore" you'd developed for him. (Not all stories involving another player's PC are necessarily origin stories, after all.) I'm actually not one of those people that automatically assumes an origin story is going to be bad - particularly if it is told in such a way that actually makes the player the central focus of the arc, as yours did (IMO).

Apologies for the delay in my response, too; I honestly didn't even notice this thread had a new post in it until just now. While I consider 'Pro Payne' to still be open (i.e. technically, I'm still taking requests), I've been very busy with a non-AE project in game (for several months now), and so I've been taking the approach of "If anyone posts a request, I'll be happy to do a review; but if there's no interest, I'll let this thread fade into obscurity again and continue my focus on the other project).

Have you bought them with AE tickets yet? I'm pretty sure you've got to do that to unlock them.

I can specifically confirm the Freakshow give XP when you defeat them after a rez in the regular game. Granted, based on the patch notes I was expecting them to anyway, but I've played dev missions with them after the patch and confirmed they are giving XP after they rez.

I don't want to clutter up Arc Club with responses every time my arc gets played, but I do want to express my sincere gratitude for one of my arcs that almost never gets played any more actually getting plays. So what I'm going to try is just edit this post to both express thanks for further plays and any comments/feedback that comes my way (although, as I mentioned before, my main interest is just getting plays; feedback is a bonus and something that doesn't get implemented very often since the account these are posted under is rarely used.) I'm sure I'll do a 'fresh post' every so often, but this will, hopefully, help keep the thread from getting cluttered.

Doctor Gemini - Thanks much! And no worries about having played it before. I appreciate *any* play, even one that doesn't up the total number of plays. That 'Mystic' issue has hounded me since I first published the arc - I can't change it since, apparently 'Mystic' is their 'rank' (like minion, or sniper). I've always (jokingly) told myself its a reference to the fact that they are 'new age' types looking for new, mind-expanding experiences, but not putting much thought into the wisdom of trying a drug like superadine. But the truth is I just can't change that.

Twoflower - And thanks to you too! Hearing that the dark blast flinging skulls caught you by surprise just made my day! That's exactly what I was hoping for when I designed them. Spent a lot of time flipping back and forth between Wiki pics of actual Skulls while putting together their costumes (and also to make sure their names perfectly followed the naming conventions used by the group - the custom bosses are really the only exception name wise, and they're a new addition made necessary by that XP bug that I posted about a few days ago). Nice to hear it worked!

SupaFreak - I can't tell you how gratifying it is to get kind words (and plays) about an arc that has languished for so long with no attention whatsoever. Thank you so much for playing and writing your impressions. As with the others, know that it is VERY much appreciated! Honestly, I think my favorite part has been the multiple mentions of the custom 'Skulls' actually catching people by surprise: I spend a LONG time trying to get them just right, and it's neat to know it was worth the effort.

#518075: Crisis at Talos Towers by @PW
Used my incarnate Energy/Energy Brute, set to 0/x5 (what I often use when I'm trying to balance rewards with my desire to be able to advance through missions at a decent pace to keep the story going).

I did this one differently than what most of my arc club plays will be like - since the arc is quite short overall, and I wanted to replicate the 'farm' experience as much as possible, I played this one three times.

I've started with my impressions as I was actually playing the arc (several times). My conclusions are below, and do get somewhat repetative considering what's up here.

My opinions (impressions after the first play through):

Lose the Storm Elemental bosses - technically, endurance drain might be a pain for a farmer using Fire Aura (not that I really care), but for me it was the fact that it's kind of a cramped map so even zoomed out I often end up 'zoomed in' and they really kind of block my view that bothers me.

You simply need fewer details to make this work better; the map choice is great, but the low ticket max makes it too east to hit the cap *with what you've got so far.* The trick is give the player the option to 'blitz' the mission to stay under the cap, or clear it if they'd rather trade tickets for XP.

Reduce the number of escorts to one, and keep him as 'Timmy' in the front of the map.

Put the officers, who only need to be rescued, not escorted, in the middle. Maybe a flashy animation to mark them ... so a dedicated farmer can spot them easily.

Put a non-combat 'ally' in the back. Have the ally tell you something like 'If you can only repair/start the high volume sprinker systems that'll curb the tide enough for the fire department to safely enter and rescue anyone else trapped in here.' Since you've got an ally with you (who is really someone you are rescuing who is trying to help you out a bit), it does make sense for you to be 'carrying them out of the building' (in the debriefing) once the situation is under control.

Second Try:

I tried to leave the escorts in place until all three were freed, then backtrack to the entrance, picking 'em up on the way. Slight improvement to my time to complete, but still hit the ticket cap.

From the story standpoint: it's more interesting and engaging than a straight farm arc, that's or sure.

From the farm standpoint: it's just not as efficent as it could be. After this second playthrough, I'm still convinced it boils down to the number of objectives, since the point is to have ambushes (it's technically trying to be an ambush farm, after all), but the number of escorts/rescues tied to ambushes easily puts you over the ticket cap, since the map is small. I still *like* the idea of needing to (strategically) work through the map, hitting only objectives that make sense, while having an in-story reason to ignore stuff that doesn't (after all, why would you be fighting 'natural hazards' that aren't really threatening anyone?). Actually makes the game play somewhat more interesting than a farm.

But the fact that 'smart play' doesn't let you find a solution to the "simultaneous highest XP and tickets per unit time equation" - it's one or the other - is something that could be worked on. Frankly, it should be easy to achieve, and still preserve the story aspect of the arc, with a reduction in the number of objectives, and slight modifications to the mechanics of how those objectives are handled.

Third Try:

This was the "story" run - like the first one, when I had an escort, I immediately took them back to the entrance. I also read the descriptions of the creatures, and would have read clues, if they were present.

As a basis for comparison, I also ran the 'Fire Cyborgs' farm three times. No need to bore anybody with the details, and the results didn't surprise me in the least (although I have no doubt they'll be less now that rezzing foes no longer grant XP after they 'get back up').

Fire Cyborgs:
Run 1: 296208 inf/minute (forgot to track tickets/minute)
Run 2: 407433 inf/minute and 256 tickets/minute
Run 3: 516864 inf/minute and 577 tickets/minute (the big jump is because I used the clickie to end the mission once I was up to about 750 tickets)

Average: 406,835 inf/minute and 416 tickets/minute

Crises at Talos Towers:
Run 1: 126,230 inf/minute and 52 tickets/minute
Run 2: 138,548 inf/minute and 56 tickets/minute
Run 3: 114,862 inf/minute and 44 tickets/minute

Average: 126,547 inf/minute and 51 tickets/minute (To be fair, while obviously significantly lower than a true farm, this is higher than what I normally get playing through standard developer content 'as intended' - which usually amounts to between 60,000 - 90,000 inf/minute from defeats at my current settings.)

My hypothesis (sorry, I do end up repeating a lot of what I say above, which is really me just re-affirming my impressions from the earlier playthroughs): A "good" 'story farm' should be set up to have an interesting (or at least somewhat engaging) story the first time through (complete with clues, etc.), but be set up in such a way as to facilitate speeding through the mission (and completing it) for increased rewards as many subsequent times as you care to play it. Key to this is making sure there's a way to finish the mission when you are about halfway to the ticket cap, and to minimize things that add to the play time.

So with that in mind:

From the standpoint of story, I agree 100% that for a 'heroic rescue' it is pretty unrealistic to make rescuing trapped citizens (and police officers) optional, but escorts take up time. Right now, the arc is set up so that you are getting everyone out while in constant peril from the natural hazards of the fire - it's realistic to assume the officers could make it out okay on their own, but not the civilians (and the arc *doesn't* have you just leaving the civilians to their own devices, which is good). But if you could somehow neutralize the danger sufficiently, you can simply assume you and whomever is accompanying you could then exit the building while not under imminent danger. That's where I was getting my ideas above:

Have Timmy as the only actual escort - the ambushes tied to him are in front anyway, so it's pretty much one continuous fight (which is keeping with the farm aspect of this).

Have the two officers be 'middle rescues' (and make them optional, so that after you've played the arc once for story, you have the option of skipping them entirely when you are 'farming' - knowing full well that activating the 'automated fire control' - see below - will be enough to save them anyway. Ironically, I'd lose the ambushes, and if possible, add an animation that makes it easier to find them and 'skip' all the other spawns if you choose (it isn't totally unrealistic you'd be ignoring 'natural hazards' that are not directly threatening the lives of the people trapped inside in favor of those that are, so an easy way to locate the trapped officers would be very helpful). Since the ambushes seem to spawn in the front room, and run to the middle, they really only seem make the mission last longer.

Then you push forward to the final room, which has an 'ally' instead of an escort. The ally tells you the ship impact knocked out the 'automated fire control' systems (or whatever), but if you can repair them, it will really help your efforts to get everyone out safely. (Either I just aggroed another group, or it looks like the ambush spawns for the rear details also show up to the rear of the map, but a bunch of ambushes tied to freeing the 'ally' might work well). If you make the 'fire control' system a glowie (that isn't insta click, like in most farms), you'd still need to clear out enough around you to be able to 'activate' it without interruption, but then the mission ends safely (and of course, you can either stay and clear more stuff out, or leave and restart the mission).

Like I said, alterations along those lines could potentially make the arc cater to both story and farm - play through once for story, and then later (and much faster) for rewards.

I agree with others, though, that to really boost the story side of the arc, you need several clues (which are easy enough to just ignore on farm runs), and I actually thought some more robust descriptions of the mobs would be good. To be honest, I was wondering if Rikti mutagens that had leaked into the building were giving the rubble, fires, and other hazards an 'unnatural life.' Kind of a silly idea, sure, but something like that might add more to the story.

But as it stands, the story side needs more story, and the mission design needs more of an 'option' to facilitate blitzing through the mission quickly. Hopefully these suggestions helped.

Normally, I'm really trying to shy away from doing my 'scoring' nonsense for arc club, but here I think it was warranted, since I really wanted to try to go for an honest rating for the arc, as it currently stands.

Score: 2.637 (So as it stands, both the in-game and my 'official' rating would be 3 stars)

Apologies if this is already known, but if not, I figured you all might want to know: if you've got a custom group that contains both stock mobs and customs, your customs will get hit with an XP penalty if all three ranks don't have a custom mob in them, but only if the particular spawn only happens to have customs in it. Otherwise the custom mob will give normal XP.

Examples (to make it clearer).
You've got a custom group. The minions and lieutenants are a mixture of custom and "stock" (developer) mobs. The bosses are only developer mobs. The arc level range is set so that the stock mobs will spawn in the mission. You're set to be the equivalent of 1 character.

1. You stumble across a spawn of nothing but three custom minions. They'll all be worth 50% XP.

2. You stumble across a spawn that is a mix of customs and stock mobs (two stock minions & one custom, two customs & one stock, one custom lt. and one stock minion, etc.), they'll all be worth normal XP (customs included).

3. You stumble across a spawn that is a single +1 lt, with no minions. If the lt is stock, you'll get full XP. If it is custom, you'll get 50%.

Note that anything that would normally "trump" the "you're missing a rank" code will also bypass the bug: specifically, if you've set a boss detail to be the custom minion, and he happens to spawn in with nothing but other custom minions as "guards", the "boss" minion will reward full XP, and his minion "guards" will give 50% XP.

I haven't tested whether or not this will happen with stock mobs if you've got customs of every rank mixed with stock mobs that don't cover every rank.

Played PENGUIN (29205), by @Tubbius.

All I can say is WOW! As mentioned in his post earlier in the thread, he put a lot of effort into a revamp of the arc, and it really shows. His efforts have really improved the arc a great deal. The writing is quite good, the story flows well, the missions are built well and, if this was the first time I'd played this neat little opener to the Waddle trilogy, I'd probably be loading up part two right now (as it turns out, I've already played the rest of the trilogy).

A few "tweaks" I can suggest:

The "escort" in the first mission was cowering the moment I spotted him. I absolutely get why that emote is being used, but the first impression you automatically get upon seeing him is that the security guards are attacking him and you need to rescue him - not that he's using security to protect himself from *your* raid on the office. Maybe a more neutral emote would be better here (especially one that has a 'flashy' effect - like it that 'scanning with a tricorder' one is available - I actually missed him completely the first time through. I actually backtracked after completing the mission to see if I could find what the "optional" objective was tied to.)

I don't know if it was intentional or not, but Phineas' wife actually spawned in behind me (e.g. I was on floor 2 of the lab, and she showed up on floor 1). That was a little jarring (the lab map is pretty linear, so I'd cleared the area where she showed up, which gave a kind of "wait, what are you doing here *now*?" feel to the objective), but nothing serious.

Really a very fun, neat little arc!

I'll put Cracking Skulls (ID #115935), by @Flame Kitten up. Note that she's my wife and uses her account to host my arcs, so this is my arc, not me recommending someone else's arc (in case my sig didn't make that clear). She doesn't play CoH any more (beyond logging in every once in a while to claim tickets and let me respond to comments), so if you send me a comment in-game, I might not get it for a while.

I'm satisfied with plays - if you want to give feedback, I'm all ears, but I'm perfectly fine with a play that comes with minimal feedback.

I think I'd be in for this. I've been working on a major in-game "project" that is not related to AE, but I have been getting interested in getting back into AE-related stuff and this might be a good way to do it. (And I choose to fully embrace the false hope that MARTy will shut down AE farms for good, which, somehow, helps my interest level a little.)

I agree that the rating system is meaningless, but that doesn't stop me from smiling when I get a 5-star rating, and feel a tad blue when I get one that's lower than that (but I get over it quickly). I think making it author specific would be, IMO, the best option: whatever the author wishes is put in a note next to their arc listing (e.g. "no rates on this one, just feedback" or "5 stars or no rating" or "please rate normally", etc.) But I'm totally okay with a "global" agreement too.

Gratz, PW! It's a great arc, and well deserving of a DC!

My gut reaction, untainted by reading the rest of the thread: Excellent job Devs! *THIS* makes me think Circle of Thorns again!

Well done, and thanks for listening to the feedback (even if so many people said what I was thinking that I didn't feel the need to add to it).

A very hearty gratz, NAR! It's a wonderful (and very funny) arc, and well deserving of a DC!

Kind of a cool topic. Here are mine:

I got about halfway through writing an arc involving the Clockwork, and never finished. Everything through mission three was done, and I had a good idea what I wanted to do with missions four and five, but never finished. That all happened around the time I started my Pro Payne project, and so I was always faced with "use my online time to finish up this arc, or actually play Pro Payne and write reviews" - the latter won out.

I had a conception for an arc where Freakshow were travelling through time, but I never did anything with it.

One of my published arcs that I never advertise (and is not in my sig) is called 'Freakshow War' - I wrote it for my wife who loved fighting the Freakshow. I actually had a place for its story to go in a sequel, but never wrote it.

Not quite the same thing, but related:

The last arc I published (The Blue Devils) was actually a significantly "cleaned up" version of an arc I put on test (meaning I spent a lot more effort trying to make the plot and mission design good). I designed the Blue Devils as a test of whether or not you could create a "balanced" custom group at low and intermediate levels and they still be worth 100% XP. I wrote a sequel to that arc (the early version), but never published it (and never will).

I also designed a custom group for the level range after the Blue Devils; the group itself exists among my absurdly long list of custom critters, and I have a backstory for them (and had a general plotline for an arc including them), but never started actually trying to write that arc.

I also have two fully-written arcs from right when the system first launched that are essentially ego-arcs (essentially = they ARE ego arcs) that were just my way of getting used to using the system. They were published just long enough for me to play through them and actually get experience (they weren't farms, I just wanted at least some tangible reward for the work), and then I removed them (because they're not any good).

I minor quibble - but if you're really looking to characterize the damage output of each "style" of Lore pet, shouldn't you *sum* the DPS of the two pets, not average them? After all, they're both attacking at the same time...

While some (a few) of the nominations are arcs I haven't played, the ones that are are all arcs that I'd think deserve consideration for Dev's choice. I'll only add one more to the list (for now):

Freaks, Geeks, and Men in Black (ID#161629)

I still think it's one of the best I've played.

And if you've got it, try crafting the temp power Envenomed Dagger, and use it about once every 10 seconds (a bit faster than that is usually best, actually). Since it tanks her regen, even the small amount of damage you are doing actually sticks, since she stops regenerating 5% of her hp every 15 seconds.

EDIT: So yeah, what Korith said about -regen; but hey, if you didn't know where to get an easy source if it, you do now...