Frozen_Northman

I just wanted to give my sincere thanks to Bubbawheat for putting this together - I had not even been aware of its existence, let alone my nomination for one of the categories, until recently. The sudden spike of plays that Cutthroat Competition was getting, along with reviewer responses, left me scratching my head for a while. But it did lead me to running some long-overdue basic maintenance on that arc.

Good luck to all who were nominated. Putting serious effort into crafting fun material for fellow players is always a good thing, and I truly appreciate the feedback that this has generated for my own work.

Like others, I am concerned about the long-term effect the XP cuts for power customization will have. I totally support the decision to penalize XP for arcs that don't include a normal minion-lieutenant-boss spread, and I understand the potential for abuse in a system with custom group power editing.

Nevertheless, my concern boils down to this: many custom critters can be just as challenging, or even more so, than normal CoH enemies. Editing power selection for custom enemies is something I've long been waiting for, as it could help me smooth out unwanted annoyances in my groups of custom enemies. (E.g., if I've made several different custom enemies, but each of them has a power that slows enemies in an area, I'd want to cut out some or all of the slowing powers so that players are not frustrated by stacked slows.)

But often, I feel like many custom enemies are best balanced at some point between the Standard and Hard settings. And if such custom groups could still wipe the floor with regular CoH groups, and yet be worth less XP, then that feels philosophically wrong.

In any event - I understand and respect the large internal debate the Devs have undoubtedly been having over how to best balance rewards in the AE system. And I would make the following suggestion for consideration:

It would seem that the intended use of the AE system is to promote the creation of new stories that are fun and engaging to play. At the same time, there is a valid concern that if rewards do not match that for other parts of the game, such stories will go unplayed and unnoticed. So, what if stories that were successfully chosen for Dev's Choice status were set to give full XP rewards? Such stories would indicate that they had met the Dev standards for being a worthy arc, and might possibly raise incentive to create AE material that met these standards.

I'd like the Sky Raider base, as appears in the final mission of the Silver Mantis SF, to be made accessible.

[ QUOTE ]
I can completely understand your view on my arc. Thanks for at least trying it, though can I ask at which mission you stopped?

[/ QUOTE ]

I played through the entire arc, start to finish. Ultimately, however, I stopped trying to give more than a cursory reading by Mission three.

[ QUOTE ]
Imagine yourself in a desert with black sand and an eternal night sky. You see a guy in black and white sitting on a rock. You make your way to him and you two start talking, he then asks you if you want to hear a story.

[/ QUOTE ]

I would suggest that this is a really important piece of setting, and would recommend trying to insert it in the first Mission Briefing. The first briefing just starts with him launching into his story, and details like the ones above are hugely important for establishing the setting.

There are a couple of ways you can insert those kinds of details - you could italicize the text that states what the player is doing when he meets the contact, or put it in a different text color.

Dang and blast it. I had typed out a long review, and forgot to save a copy of it before hitting "Continue." This means that my review got deleted by the "form you submitted is no longer valid" glitch.

Review of "The Day I Tried To Live," ID # 131780

Soloed with my level 41 Night Widow on Difficulty Level 2.

Overall Thoughts:

I fear that I am not the best audience member for the arc that you have written. You made certain stylistic choices that I fundamentally don't enjoy. Specifically:

This is an arc in which the character playing the arc is largely irrelevant. The missions all seem to be played from the perspective of the Mission Contact himself. The arc is pretty much a vehicle for the contact to explain the form that his insanity took, and the destructive path it led him down. I much prefer to play through arcs in which the contact and the character build a rapport, and the character becomes a primary mover and shaker in the contact's story.

The vast majority of the text in this arc, from the briefings to the clues, deals with what the thought processes were of an insane man. Regrettably, this is not what I find to be a compelling story.

The arc also had some surreal moments that did not sit well with me. Several missions involve the appearance of what I guess were a psychological representation of the contact, spouting insane philosophical ramblings.

Purely from a mechanical standpoint, the mission played reasonably well. It felt a little bland, as there wasn't much dialogue other than what amounted to an insane man's philosophical treatise on life. Trying to follow the psychology that was going on gave me a headache, so I gave up.

I also was not particularly a fan of the large number of Clues that were included. I fear this is a point where we will have differing philosophies. I recognize that Cutthroat Competition has only a single clue that appears, and no souvenir. And with some tweaks, I could probably insert a few more clues. But apart from that, I tend to feel that Clues should be limited to major plot points. You had some instances where a Clue would show up from destroying a non-essential objective, which amounted to how the Mission Contact felt insane with rage, and I felt that ultimately added to a clutter of Clues.

So ultimately, I feel that I am not a good person to give a numerical star rating to this arc, because it's as if I was watching a genre of movie that I don't like. It would be like asking someone who hates horror films to rate a horror film. I respect the effort that you put into your work, and realize that others may very well enjoy it - this style of storytelling simply is not my cup of tea.

Emansor, thank you for your review of Cutthroat Competition. I'll get right on to playing your arc in return.

I am curious as to what aspects merited a lack of stars, in your opinion. Some people find one or two major issues, and a bunch of minor ones. Since this arc, like all of my other arcs, is hitting the filesize cap, I have to make tough choices about where I can make cuts. Consequently, I am eager to learn what people view as less important elements that they don't pay much attention to, and what elements they consider vital.

A playthrough and review of your arc should be forthcoming shortly.

Review of Trolls and Tribulations, Arc ID# 181351, by Nublet.

Soloed by my lvl 41 Night Widow, pretending to be a hero. Difficulty level 2.

[u]Mission One:[u]
The mission briefing text feels a bit abrupt, though the contact goes into more detail in the sendoff text.

Now, the contact is essentially trying to grab my attention by pointing out the oddity of Trolls conducting a raid in Brickstown, or so the brevity of the initial briefing text would lead me to believe. Thus, as a minor stylistic point, I would suggest revisiting the last words with which Dr. Sheridan sends me off: "You need to get to that lab right now send them back into their Troll hole. Uncovering their motives is of lesser importance." (As a simple point of grammar, I think the word "and" should be inserted between the words "now" and "send" if you otherwise leave the sentence as-is.)

Strictly speaking, this may be true. But it's like a sudden reversal from the initial hook - Trolls are present where they normally aren't, and that's curious. I'd recommend rephrasing the final two sentences along the lines of, "Saving that lab from the Trolls is clearly the most important task. But if you can also learn their motives for the raid, that would be helpful."

But enough of my going on and on about writing style. On to the mission!

I find a group of custom Trolls with a hostage right off the bat. They seem to be menacing her with... pamphlets or literature of some sort, which seems a bit odd.

Nevertheless, the rank-and-file minions are armed with pickaxes and shovels. And given that Sheridan said that these Trolls had just tunneled into the facility, I find this an absolutely wonderful touch.

Those Trolls seemed to be asking for stuff about which they clearly had no clue. The hostage scientist, understandably, is bewildered by this. But a valuable clue is added to my clue bag - the fact that these Trolls have "shopping lists" of stuff to be raiding for. This suggests, to my mind, that someone more intelligent may be pulling the strings.

I enjoy the look of the custom Trolls, and the grumbling digging crews are a nice touch of flavor. Further adding to the flavor are Trollish patrols mentioning how they're glad the shopping lists include pictures of what to look for. Ah. Now the Trolls menacing the scientist with literature suddenly make more sense. Clever.

Something that I've come to recognize is that multiple patrols or bosses with the same dialogue could conceivably get repetitive to players, but I don't think you quite cross the line. I just thought I'd mention that I'm coming to feel that three or four instances of the same dialogue seems to be where that line is - for me, at any rate.

Seeing Magnusson brought a smile to my face. A Troll boss, dressed better than his peers, providing surprisingly sensical business-speak with remedial grammar. [u]That's[u] certainly one for the history books!

This is a really, solidly fun first mission. It gives me high hopes for the rest of the arc.

The mission exit text is also a lovely bit of flavor - it says that I've received a voice mail from Sheridan, and it transitions nicely to his debriefing text.

[u]Mission Two:[u]
These new, stronger Trolls are now assaulting Brickstown in force. Time to see what good I can do.

The map seems to be an outdoor King's Row map, which I imagine is an acceptable compromise - I'm certainly not aware of an outdoor Brickstown map.

The Trolls rampaging through Brickstown seem to be the same sorts that I fought in the tunnels. Which is, initially, a mild shame. (Of course, I'm well aware of how custom enemies gobble up memory space, so I stamp down on my disappointment.)

Since the outdoor map is somewhat large, with all sorts of alleyways, it's completely by chance that I first stumble across the citizen in need of rescue. I oblige her. And she starts to thank me, but then freaks out at... Wow. Winged Troll archers rushing in to ambush me. That causes me to bust out in laughter. The descriptive text further suggests that these are Trolls that have been pushing the mutation envelope to the point of questionable wisdom. At any rate - the placement of the ambush worked out quite well, since I was able to turn around from the citizen to see the freakish winged Trolls just as they rounded a corner.

I'm guessing that there were some Crey set to battle the custom Trolls, since there's some dialogue that has shown up in my text window. I never actually see them, however. I suspect the custom Trolls have been pasting them in no time flat. In fact, I occasionally stumble across groups of custom Trolls that include the Ogre Commandant boss. Which would certainly explain the short shelf life of any hypothetical normal enemies on this level. You might consider checking that, and possibly scaling down the difficulty level of any Troll groups that are supposed to be fighting in the streets against hypothetical Crey.

Ah. Yes. I finally got lucky enough to find a battle between the Custom Trolls and Crey. The Crey get absolutely slaughtered in very short time, thanks to the regularly-appearing Ogre Commandants. (Those guys one-shot the minions.) And later, I stumble across the just-disappearing corpses of some Council. I fear the potential flavor of the battles between the custom Trolls and the regular groups is being lost by the Trolls being so comparatively high-powered. I'm not sure whether the minions, lieutenants, and Bosses are on Standard or Hard - it may be worth a check, as some of them do hit fairly hard.

Okay, I find the nurse next, who seems to be fending off Trolls by casually flipping a baseball bat in her hand. This would ordinarily lead me to wonder if there's a better animation for her to use in this situation, but that's a minor style issue. When rescued, she says, "You have to help Doc Science! Steven's in trouble!" As another minor style point, I'd suggest changing "Doc Science" to "Dr. Sheridan." Though Sheridan's flavor text does establish his nickname as "Doctor Science," so it's entirely your call.

The rookie hero that needs to be rescued is also in the vicinity, and I love the flavor text that explains [u]why[u] a rookie hero is in Brickstown.

Sheridan is nearby, being menaced by Winged Trolls. I rescue him, and this triggers a new objective to get a new sample from a Winged Troll, since the last ones were ruined. This last cascading objective feels a little bit forced, but I soldier on.

Ah... most heroes probably wouldn't have an issue with this, but apparently Dr. Sheridan is meant to be an ally or something. And since my Night Widow has stealth, she easily leaves Sheridan behind. It doesn't seem vital to keep him around, so I leave him.

After running way across the city block again, I finally find the named boss, Kjell, and a group of winged trollish archers. The fight with Kjell seems to indicate that they wanted to lure out Sheridan. Ultimately, I feel like this last objective doesn't add a lot to the mission, and would suggest cutting it. The plot of the story seems like it would carry on just fine if it ended with the rescue of Sheridan, and I fear many players may get frustrated with another free-range search after finding him.

[u]Mission Three:[u]
Dr. Sheridan's research indicates that these Trolls are indeed being further mutated by some sophisticated work. It's off to Portal Corp. next, to see if someone has stolen Sheridan's access codes.

And now the custom Trolls start expanding their roster, with the Winged Trolls now part of the regular lineup, and Supa Dupa Trolls joining along with them. Cool.

As I progress through the halls, my text window shows a Supa Dupa Troll saying, "B9128P7..." That seems really odd, so you might want to double-check that. Oh, wait - unless that's Sheridan's password, and you're illustrating how the Trolls are accessing Portal Corp. that way. Still, if that [u]is[u] what's going on, you might consider making it a bit more explicit.

Heh. And the trolls are trying to hack a computer system with jackhammers. Why am I not surprised?

Things get a little hectic when some Praetorian underlings show up suddenly. I run ahead, take the elevator, and concentrate on finding the night janitor and the biggest Troll to arrest.

Hah. Love the Trollspawn dialogue as I rescue the Portal Corp Security bot. Very nice touch.

Ouch. I run into three Supa Dupa Trollspawn that are bunched together, and get KO'ed. Stacking radiation debuffs are nasty. The vagaries of chance, I suppose. Or... not. It looks like the patrols are exclusively made up of the Supa Dupa Trollspawn. You might consider retooling that particular custom group, if you can. Stacking radiation debuffs, like I said, can be seriously painful. I shudder to think of what would happen if a group ran this arc and ran into even more of them.

Hmm. Rescuing the night janitor suggests that B9128P7 is actually the code for Praetorian Earth, and that the Trolls are trying to close the portal to that dimension. That actually was not clear to me from the previous in-mission chatter, so you might consider editing your text to clarify that.

It looks like the objective to help arrest the biggest Trollspawn is a cascading objective, and I'm not sure why that is. Since the map is several floors, having to backtrack through Portal Corp. to find the newly-spawned boss is a minor annoyance.

And the biggest Trollspawn is... whoa. A Devouring Earth Elite Boss. If I recall correctly, the same model that is used for the Devoured version of Pyriss, villainside. This would ordinarily make me react dubiously, but... the in-battle dialogue is just too dang funny. And there are allied PPD ambush spawns to help me take it down, which is nice. Even if the PPD is largely ineffective because they get one-shot by the Elite Boss. (Though that means I get to laugh at another wonderful line when the EB defeats something. This battle is truly a highlight of this arc, thus far.)

[u]Mission Four:[u]
Ooh. Now that's a nifty plot twist. And it builds nicely on the clues that you've left so far. (Including the name-dropping of Sheridan in the final boss fight in Mission Two, so I understand why you included it, but it still feels a bit clunky as an objective.) I won't spoil the details in this review.

Sheridan uses believable logic (to me, at least) to deduce where I need to go for the final mission. And he warns me that the upcoming map is enormous, so I shouldn't waste time trying to arrest every single Troll in there, but concentrate on the objective...

Yep! I recognize THIS map! It's the same map that I use to conclude one of my other arcs, "A Tooth For A Tooth," ID #10173. And boy, I am suddenly glad that I am playing with a stealthy character.

I find the "ally" early on. And said ally soon gets KO'ed by the custom enemies that I'm trying to skip. Ah, well.

Uff-da... Despite Sheridan's warning that I shouldn't get bogged down in arresting every Troll, there sure are a lot of objectives on this map. I suspect that will frustrate many players.

Oh, dear... cascading objectives, and I need to escort the evil scientist back OUT of this large, winding map. And said bad guy won't follow me if I still have stealth on. That's rather annoying. I run the gauntlet, and get the guy off the map. At least he doesn't turn hostile on me.

But now I have to backtrack and "Cleanse the Atrocity." Which means continuing to scour the really big map, possibly involving backtracking over paths I've already searched. Ouch. I strongly, strongly recommend either making the Atrocity a defined objective from the start, or removing him entirely, or spawning him after finding the Ally near the front of the cave system. Having him spawn after I've already dedicated a lot of time to exploring that map is just painful.

[u]In Conclusion:[u]
You said that you put a lot of effort into creating this mission, and it certainly shows. The story is well-written, well-proofread, with tons of flavorful bits to add color throughout the arc, and lots of fun humor that had me chortling.

The downside, I fear, results from certain specific instances of cascading objectives. Not ALL cascading objectives are bad, mind you. But when you start using maps with lots of twists, turns, and dead-ends, cascading objectives can cause a good deal of frustration. Especially on the final map, where Dr. Sheridan's highlighted caution against arresting all of the Trolls ends up being somewhat contrary to the reality of what that mission currently requires.

I really, really want to award this arc five stars. But because of the aforementioned moments of frustration, I feel compelled to restrain myself to four.

Nevertheless... if you could retool some of the cascading objectives, I would have no hesitation upgrading my review to a solid gold, five star, worthy of Dev's Choice status review. Even with my reservations, I feel like this arc shows some inspired material, and I shall recommend it to my in-game friends for their attention.

Feedback on Spanks For The Memories, Arc ID# 21144

Soloed with my lvl 40 Fortunata, pretending to be a hero.

[u]Mission One:[u]
The arc title made me chuckle, and since the plot is tied to the history of former mayor 'Spanky' Rabinowitz of the CoH history, it's a nice story hook. From what I understand of the official CoH canon, Spanky was well-known for corruption and backroom dealings, yet was highly popular nevertheless, and Paragon City thrived under his administration as mayor.

A simple search for records turns into anything but. The mission entry popup gives a nice transition to the expected action.

I find the records very quickly, as they're not that far from the entrance. The Mission Clue doesn't suggest that they're anything special. But the Circle of Thorns seems to think so, as indicated by the Boss speech.

The "Historical Documents" clue has a misspelling in it - "beaurocrats" should be spelled "bureaucrats."

A minor matter of taste, but I don't feel like "Burning Sulfur" captures the feel of a standard Circle of Thorns boss. The leaders of the CoT, when they are given names, tend to sound like they're names from a long-dead language. Akarist and Baron Zoria are two examples from in the game. In one of my other published arcs, I invented names like Raxanthris, Mirko, and Stratus. You might consider playing around with syllables until you find something that sounds vaguely Latin.

Nevertheless, mission completed.

[u]Mission Two:[u]
Another minor edit - "Prohibition" should be capitalized, as it is a proper noun referring to a period in history.

The first mission seemed to only turn up a dead end, but there's at least a hint that the Circle's involvement will be tied back into this story.

The mission contact sends me on a fresh path of investigation, this time to shake down some members of the Family.

And as it turns out, this involves a new custom group. Interesting. By and large, I like the artistic choices, and appreciate that you went to the trouble of putting custom descriptive text for each one. The only ones that I don't quite care for, visually, are the Frost Bodyguards. They have a moustache with a blue tint that seems out-of-place, and the sight of a huge hulking bruiser pulling out a pair of katanas is unexpected, to say the least. Normally, I'd expect the huge bodyguards to be the Superstrength types. And if were to design a dual blades, rank-and-file member of a crime family, I'd typically envision him with a pair of short knives. Those are just my personal tastes, though.

This is another straightforward mission, in which defeating the boss turns up some information. Nothing that looks like it would necessarily advance the plot, though.

[u]Mission Three:[u]
The Circle's involvement continues, and I'm off to retrieve something they stole from Spanky's heirlooms. Though being told to go look in Oranbega is a bit broad, since Oranbega is supposed to be an entire city. I feel it's a bit like being told, "I'm sure the thieves went to New York City. Go there and find them!"

I find one of the necessary bosses (which I suspect is randomly generated), and it turns out to be a succubus named Qual'Toth. I can totally believe that as a Circle of Thorns name.

Spanky's soul is a particularly ancient and powerful one? Unexpected, but I'm willing to buy that - I've certainly stumbled across random Circle rituals where they say stuff like, "You have a glorious aura about you" to the victim.

I'm not sure what to make of the Soul Seductress, which is a boss custom enemy. She goes on about her "charms" during the fight, but she seems pretty much restricted to manipulating fire as her powers. I would have expected something more in line with psionic or mind control powers to fit the name.

[u]Mission Four:[u]
Again, I have a bit of an issue with the scope of the investigation that the contact asks me to conduct. Yes, both the CoT and the Soul Demons are apparently interested in the map of Dark Astoria. But being told to go and investigate the whole of Dark Astoria feels pretty broad. (Not as broad as investigating all of Oranbega, mind you, so not as big of an issue.)

Here, I get to see more of the Soul Demons, a demonic-themed custom group. It's a diverse blend of powers and demonic looks, with nothing particularly overpowered.

Still, it took me a fair bit of searching to find the boss that I was looking for - despite the fact that the boss and its spawn were using a big, flashy animation. It also turned out that the 'boss' was a lieutenant-class enemy, and only spoke when I defeated it. You might consider adding a bit of text to that particular enemy for when a player gets near, to help speed up the search.

The demon speaks in a language that I don't understand, but says the name "Rabinowitz." The thing is, given the evidence that I've already collected, it doesn't feel like this mission really adds to the progression of clues.

[u]Mission Five:[u]
So, as it turns out, the mission contact was able to decipher the map, and pinpoint a location in Dark Astoria. That really makes me feel like Mission Four was spent in pointless activity - my character ultimately did nothing in that mission that helped progress things toward Mission Five.

Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of the map used for Mission Five. With the heavy fog, it's hard to see where my character is going. I end up relying on the overhead map a lot in order to navigate.

I defeat the final boss, and then beat the demons that are guarding Spanky's soul... and then find out that it's all for nothing. Spanky's soul does a final reveal, explaining that he sold his soul both to gain prosperity for Paragon City, and to ensure that the demons to whom he sold his soul would not menace the city. And, apparently to prove their power, these demons plunged Dark Astoria into the state that it is currently. And Spanky's soul refuses to leave, because doing so would really tick off these demons to the point of doing more bad stuff to Paragon City.

I have a bit of a problem with that explanation, since my understanding is that the Banished Pantheon are primarily responsible for what happened to Dark Astoria - especially since they are by far the dominant group in that zone.

It's also frustrating to have a story resolve in such a fashion that tells you, despite all that you've done, it doesn't matter, and won't change anything.

[u]In Conclusion:[u]
Through what I presume is a deliberate choice of existing and custom factions, you've created an arc that can be played by a wide range of levels. (Though I'll note that low-level characters often have trouble against groups made entirely of custom enemies, so I'm not sure how that would work out in this case.)

I have more of an issue with how the story develops and builds. Typically, I like to feel like I'm learning another key piece of substance with each mission. In this arc, the progression goes:
1) We learn that the CoT is interested in Spanky.
2) We get some background info on Spanky that ultimately isn't relevant to the core story.
3) We learn that another group of demons apparently has Spanky's soul.
4) We don't really learn anything.
5) We learn why Spanky sold his soul, and why it's doomed to stay where it is, at the tail end of the mission.

Missions Two and Four don't feel like they're advancing the plot. And to a lesser extent, Mission One suffers from a sense of being a dead-end clue.

Apart from that, I think that it's important that every story give the player a sense that what they are doing somehow matters - that they have accomplished something. The player ends up walking away from this arc having learned something, but they haven't changed any lives for the better, or made a difference in the balance between good and evil. Even the mission contact says that she wishes she had never asked the player to do any of this in the first place.

Thus, with apologies, I rate this arc at 2 stars.

Review of Trollbane, Arc ID# 106553.

Soloed with my lvl 44 MA/Regen Scrapper, forced down to lvl 14 by the nature of the arc.

[u]Mission One:[u]

Ugh. Back Alley Brawler greets me by saying "Heyas newbie." That grates. Others may react differently, but I tend to find that greeting as condescending and insulting. Especially since BAB immediately recognizes afterwards, "Good to see you again, you've come a ways."

It's a comparatively minor tweak, but I'd suggest changing BAB's immediate intro to something like, "Hey, hotshot! Good to see you again, you've come a ways." The rest of BAB's intro text seems to capture his character just fine.

Inside the mission, there are groups of Skulls and Trolls already fighting. Their dialogue bubbles come up before they can even see me. Which makes their reference to 'capes' being present ring hollow. And as a matter of personal taste, I wouldn't normally think "emogoth" to be a part of standard Troll vocabulary, let alone of a Troll that is supposedly mad with fear and rage.

There's a destructible object early on labeled a "Superadyne Lab." While "Dyne" is indeed an accepted canon abbreviation, my understanding has always been that the long form has been spelled "Superadine." Don't know why, but that's how I've always seen it in-game.

The map is a lovely choice, and once again, I'd like to know which one it is.

Straightforward mission. Find the glowing clue, and we're done. It's not inherently obvious how a hero would know that the bones are "Mystically charged remains," however, unless they're a hero with a magic background. Or the bones are emitting a soft, dark glow, for example. Otherwise, if I saw a bunch of bones set in a pattern with other ritualistic elements, I might presume that they'd been used in some form of a ritual, but I'd have no way of telling whether it was successful or not.

I see that one of the clues refers to something overheard in the fight from one of the Skulls about a magic ritual. I didn't remember this from playing the mission, so I scrolled through my box of text. Yep, there it is. "That ectoplasmic idiot got loose and went after the Trolls! We need to rebind him." The problem with putting clues like that in dialogue of ongoing fights, is that it fires off well before I reach the enemies in question. It's very easy to miss. I'd be tempted to insert a Skull boss to say that important information, especially since Bosses tend to refrain from saying their dialogue until players get close enough to see them say it.

In the debriefing, BAB also makes reference to "Superadyne." Since I suspect you've chosen to spell it this way throughout your arc, I'll simply repeat my opinion, with this game info page as reference: The long form of the drug is Superadine, and its two accepted abbreviations are "Supes" and "Dyne."

"Superadine, a street drug often called Supes (or more recently Dyne), not only causes the Troll mutations in users, but has also become integral to the gang’s initiation rites, and in fact is a part of all gang rituals."

[u]Mission Two:[u]
In the briefing, the word "adresses" should be spelled as "addresses."

Feh. BAB sends me off calling me a "newbie" again. BAB, dude... buddy - it's not endearing. It's patronizing. It's the root source from which the insult "n00b" is derived, which is thrown around all too often by other players. Guess it's just a pet peeve of mine.

At least he gave me a MacGuffin to recognize anything magical that I may find.

Enter the mission and... Good Lord, there's a lot of text that's triggering without me being nearby. It's a little overwhelming.

And while there's a Boss in this level, it looks like there's so many patrols, they're encountering him before I do.

Ah. Found him. He kills me as I'm looking at his custom text. But at least the custom text is nicely historical, and adds to the growing mystery.

Eh. I'm not particularly a fan of this implementation of Troll-speak. By deliberately misspelling the words that they use, you've made the normal Trolls look so dumb as to be barely functional. For an example of Trollspeak done particularly well, IMHO, I recommend the arc "Troll Goods, Best Goods" (ID# 6845) by @Muu.

The final glowing interactive object has no text appearing over the red bar. And that usually draws my attention much more than the green text in the lower left corner of the screen.

[u]Mission Three:[u]

BAB calling me "newbie" is getting really freaking tiresome at this point. Trainee, rookie, youngblood, may all be acceptable alternatives. Or even $name. Because I do have a name, dangit, and BAB hasn't yet had the common decency to call me by it.

I'm not sure I buy into the concept of Numina being as spooked by the clues that I've found as BAB claims. If she's so afraid that she "nearly screams," then why is this still being subcontracted to someone no higher than 14th level? It just feels like a really odd disconnect. I'd dial down the text to suggest that she was "really disturbed," or something like that. But I should get some more clues from the mission itself.

I enter the mission, and... Lt. Sohmers, Longbow Warden, is apparently introducing himself to me from the end of a large room at the end of a hallway. Not sure what his trigger is, or how he's interacting with the existing enemies, because I have to fight through five spawns before I can even find him.

Great. I catch up with Sohmers, and he's a patronizing jerk. So long, Sohmers! Wish I could say it was fun teaming with you!

Dang. Just realized that I've been doing this arc on the lowest difficulty rating. Hard to tell how that would have affected some of the other enemies that I've faced. Then again, most people running this arc probably [u]would[u] be at the lowest difficulty level. Or at least, they bloody well should. I opt to keep things at this difficulty level. I suspect the result is that typical Bosses get downgraded to Lieutenant status, and Elite Bosses are downgraded to Bosses.

The assorted text that has shown up in the third mission has left me feeling so frustrated that I blitz past it, not even wanting to pay attention to it at this point.

I complete the mission, and start looking at the clues I've gotten. So... the Skulls apparently managed to steal a ritual from a necromancer that terrified the Circle of Thorns. Which raises the question... how?

I report back to BAB. Good Lord, this guy has no freaking respect for me OR the Longbow Warden he sent to team up with me. Calling us "the redshirt brigade"? Seriously? I've worked with [u]villains[u] who have shown more respect than this guy!

[u]Mission Four:[u]
And it looks like some details get handwaved away. The Skulls stole a ritual from a Necromancer, who "can't track 'em because he'll fall apart in the sun." Okay... I go back to my Clues bag. The Circle apparently summoned the Necromancer, which I suppose suggests that he's an undead being... which [u]might[u] suggest that he has an aversion to sunlight. And after the Circle summoned this Necromancer, the Skulls somehow managed to find a way to steal this ritual from the Necromancer, which is so nasty that it could freak out Numina.

Feh. And the Boss that I need to face this time uses a combination of Illusion and Empathy. And she glows so much that I can't very well make out her costume.

This makes for the most frustrating fight that I've faced so far. Holds plus Confusion, and no mez resistance on my toon at this stage. I convert three of my medium blues into a medium mez resist, and take her down. The ambush is the cherry pit on top of this annoying sundae, and I get the heck out of Dodge before having to worry about them. Frankly, at level 14 and below, I consider ambushes during boss fights to be overkill, unless you KNOW that a team will be running the mission.

BAB's mission debriefing contains the misspelled word, "distintegrate," which I presume is meant to be, "disintegrate." Unless you're deliberately making a pun and suggesting that we're removing all color from the Illustrated Woman.

[u]Mission Five:[u]
I see a reference to "the Bonemason" here, and this causes me to head back to my Clue Bag. Sure enough, there's a clue there saying that a Skull coughed up that name. I can't recall when that clue showed up. For that matter, the clue doesn't reveal the significance of who the Bonemason is, either. So, I'm left to infer that the Bonemason is the person in charge of this particular Skulls plot.

Between the debriefing of Mission Four, and the briefing of Mission Five, that BAB was so ticked that a personal friend of his was reanimated by this ritual, that he decided to invade Oranbega and get all medieval on the necromancer who created this ritual. Instead of on the person who used it. And why was the necromancer left in Oranbega again, instead of being apprehended? My brain is beginning to hurt.

As he sends me off, BAB says that while I'm beginning to get a bit of a rep (oh, thanks for noticing, you condescending *bleep*!), I might want to "dial it back a bit" for this one, because I'm heading into all-out war. Bwuh? I should be... giving less effort, this time?

I also don't get why a Skull leader would want to turn the Hollows into the next Dark Astoria. If it were the Banished Pantheon, sure. But the Skulls have typically seemed more concerned with mundane matters of drug-dealing and money. Deliberately going along with a scheme to wipe out their biggest drug customers seems counter-intuitive.

Headache is now threatening to reach migraine levels, so I just head into the mission.

Lots of big spawns of Trolls fighting Skulls in here. I take BAB's advice to "dial it back a bit," and do... nothing, for a while. Let the Trolls and Skulls whittle each other down, or just skip past them.

The first boss that I take down is Crimson Fist, again. Then a regular Skull Boss. Then Illustrated Woman, again. At which point the Mission Objective screen switches from saying "X bosses to defeat," to "Illustrated Woman." Which seems weird.

The final boss that I take out is the Bonemason himself. A Troll ambush spawns in the middle of the fight - which as I mentioned above, seems overkill for what I suspect is an Elite Boss fight at level 14 and under. The Bonemason's descriptive text does in fact confirm that he led the Skulls on an Oranbegan raid to steal a ritual from the necromancer. And it further explains that said part of Oranbega was mostly deserted, which I suppose is an explanation of how he managed to pull it off - it just raises the subsequent question of why that section of Oranbega would be so deserted if the CoT had chosen to summon a Necromancer of such far-reaching intellect in that area.

[u]In Conclusion:[u]

If I surmise correctly, you inserted a total of four different Elite Bosses in that mission, which at least downgrade to Bosses if played solo on the lowest difficulty rating. Two of them need to be faced down twice. Some of them spawn ambushes in the course of their fights. This is a lot more than I would typically recommend for a low-level arc.

Still, it's manageable if run on the lowest difficulty rating. You might consider putting in a warning in the mission introduction to make sure that players do so.

The highlight of this particular arc is the attention that is paid to the history one can find in City of Heroes. The final debriefing also provides a handy note as to where one can find the history plaques for some of the references, which is a really nice touch.

Nevertheless, following the storyline really did give me a headache. I need to take an aspirin and lie down for a while. Three stars.

Thanks for the review of "A Tooth For A Tooth," TeChameleon. Yes, I will review another one of yours in return. Some responses to your responses:

[ QUOTE ]
If you've got room, I really think it would work better if there were different clues for all the crates (so five separate retrievals rather than just one duplicated five times). Otherwise the last four just feel like busywork... which, I suppose, they are, really, but no point in boring the player...

[/ QUOTE ]

I shudder to think how much space that would take up. That mission already flies by quickly on account of the Midnighter Club map being small and compact, and I also trimmed the interaction time for the crates to below their defaults. Do you [u]really[u] find the first mission that boring?

[ QUOTE ]
Very nordic feel overall, although I'm not sure German fairytales wandering in quite works

[/ QUOTE ]

My research indicates that the Germans got that fairy tale, and a lot of their other mythology and ancient religion, from the Norse. For example, Wagner's "Ring Cycle" is based on German legends that are in turn based on the older Norse legends. There's a lot of culture that the Norse exported to Germany via its Viking explorers and raiders.

[ QUOTE ]
Funny... for some reason I always thought it was "Wayland" Smith, not "Weyland"... or is that just a variant?

[/ QUOTE ]

Both are accepted variants. When a legend spreads over countries, so do the number of accepted spellings.

[ QUOTE ]
Hmm... not sure on the archers' costume- did they really wear mail under a tunic like that?

[/ QUOTE ]

Typically, the Vikings did not have fully-dedicated archery contingents. They were armed with swords, axes, and bows, and were expected to be able to use all of them. Bows were typically used for an initial salvo, before charging into melee.

[ QUOTE ]
Infernal? Uhm... ooookay?

[/ QUOTE ]

I begin to get the impression that people would just as soon have any hero whatsoever stripped from the objectives of this mission, which would make the mission even more vanilla.

Andvari explains in the briefing that he chose a time when a hero was seeking to do battle with Atta, chief of the Trolls. The logic being that if a villain comes in and defeats an invading hero, that will get positive attention from Atta. Making a custom hero would take space I don't have to spare, and the number of heroes available at that level range are limited. I seem to recall that Valkyrie also has an incarnation in that range, though I've typically found her more frustrating to fight than Infernal.

I had been of the belief that [u]any[u] battle-seeking hero would be a natural choice to seek out Atta, who I designed as a custom Archvillain to serve as a credible reason for a high-powered Hero to seek him out.

[ QUOTE ]
Oy... the Atta cave, while perfectly thematic, is a big map. And feels kinda lifeless at the moment, to be honest. Some patrols, mob chatter, optional glowies, whatever, would go a long way towards dispelling the 'sheeze, yet another branch of this stupid huge-[censored] cave'.

[/ QUOTE ]

Would you prefer it if the Hero were stripped out entirely, and some separate patrols put in with different bits of dialogue, but the same annoyingly huge map were used? Or should I simply write that map off as "Never To Be Used In Any Arc Whatsoever For Sheer Bloody Bigness"?

I'll note that I already set Atta's spawn point to be in the Middle of the map, instead of the end. But that doesn't seem to help too much, especially with all of the maze-like twists in the tunnels.

[ QUOTE ]
Interesting- seems our (Dark) Dwarf takes the long-term view of things... although his lack of knowledge (or at least lack of mention) about Superadine strikes me as odd- that's what's impairing the Troll's brains and giving them their powers, after all.

[/ QUOTE ]

So you equate lack of mention with lack of knowledge? I mean, I certainly know that the Trolls aren't [u]real[u] Trolls, but rather humans mutated through Superadine overdose. I just didn't find that fact particularly relevant to Andvari's plans. If a cask of everfull mead has been further enchanted to give all who drink it more qualities like the Trolls of old, including intelligence, what does it matter if those who drink from it are chemically altered to begin with?

[ QUOTE ]
As far as story goes, the only change I'd suggest (quite strongly, in fact) is Andvari dangling the promised reward a little more often, and maybe sweeten the pot every so often- after all, he does say he understands greed. He mentions the reward once at the beginning, and then it's all about him and you toadying for him- something a lot of players really, really don't like, and a repeated complaint about the 'canon' CoV missions. And maybe change the souvenir to give mention that you got a nice, fat reward out of him.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sigh... and I had hoped to save on space by letting it be known that the players were getting paid well for their efforts from the start. I felt that players didn't much care for repetitive dialogue. Apparently, the exception is when the contact says, "Yes, I really AM paying you well for your services. Really. Yes, here too. And here again."

[ QUOTE ]
From what I've seen of your two arcs, your greatest strengths lie in contact dialogue laying out the story; your missions themselves tend to be somewhat vanilla, with a... rather minimalist approach when it comes to in-mission dialogue, flavour glowies, triggers and the like.

[/ QUOTE ]

So, to your mind, every mission should have a patrol with dialogue, every glowie should be different, and every named Boss should have something to say? Just looking for clarification on what makes a mission less vanilla.

[ QUOTE ]
Odd, I have a popup for the warehouse... and you didnt see one?

[/ QUOTE ]

You may very well have done so, and this may simply have been an instance of my memory being fuzzy by the time I had gotten far enough in the mission to think about mentioning it. Just goes to show how slippery memory can be.

[ QUOTE ]
Not sure I agree with your view of the Cabal, they always seemed fairly nasty to me - especially the "10 times a victor" witch you have to fight. I truely wish I could find a group that would slow down in KHTF - but not likely now. That TF is rarely done anymore.

[/ QUOTE ]

Fair enough. We all have different impressions that we carry away from our individual experiences and perceptions. My personal take from everything that I saw of the missions in Croatoa is that the Red Caps are, by far, the biggest evil to be found in that area. As I understand the in-game backstory, the Red Caps were responsible for transporting the Fir Bolg to Croatoa from Ireland. And when the Red Caps began to fear that the Fir Bolg might be too strong to control, they also magically transported the Tuatha de Dannan, the natural enemies of the Fir Bolg, whom they also trapped in Croatoa. This would create a continuing conflict to the Red Caps' delight, since they lust for the mass misery of others.

The Cabal were distrustful of outsiders, to be sure, and jaded from a centuries-long culture of fighting the vicious Red Caps. When Mary Mac Comber forces the heroes to face her ten times in succession in the Katie Hannon TF, it is a test of prowess before she'll extend her trust to them. Kinda like not wanting to waste time and effort with an ally if they're too weak to make a difference against the Red Caps.

Hercules, thank you for the feedback regarding "Fog of War." Glad you enjoyed it!

Here's my review on Tales of Croatoa: A Rose By Any Other Name..., Arc ID# 178774

I played this arc solo on my lvl 41 Night Widow, pretending to be a hero.

[u]Mission One:[u]

Nice design on the Mission Contact, and you capture the character of a lonely ghost quite well in the initial briefing. I feel that the combination of four different colors in the initial text is a bit too much of a visual distraction, though. I'd be more inclined to switch the orange text to the generic white, but that's my personal taste.

The mission itself is straightforward, while faithfully sticking to the wicked vibe of the Red Caps. A minor typo can be found in the text after interacting with one of the piles of bones. The result reads: "You found nothing. The Redcaps didnt leave a shred that would help identify their victim." The word "didn't" should include the apostrophe.

One of the chests, after interacting with it, states that it is filled with gold and trinkets, and that the player leaves it alone because it's not what he/she is there for. I would typically urge caution in ascribing motive to the character running through the arc. True, this is assuredly a heroic arc, and true heroes don't do good deeds purely in exchange for a paycheck. But there's also a wide spectrum of heroic moralities out there, and I can easily imagine a number of heroes who wouldn't think twice about snatching gold from wicked Red Caps while trying to free a victim. Ultimately, this is simply a cautionary point about saying what the player would do.

The mechanical elements are well-implemented, and the mission plays nicely.

[u]Mission Two:[u]

This is a pretty straightforward mission. Again, I like the dialogue from the mission contact. It's endearing.

I chose to test a hypothesis, since the objectives on the Mission Header show up in two different colors. Sure enough, the objectives in white are optional, while the one in orange is the crucial objective. Nice planning, there.

If I recall correctly, this mission does not have a pop-up window with entry text. Of course, it's not a requirement - especially when running close to the filesize limit, and if you need to make tough choices. But this is one of those instances where I feel like a pop-up entry window would be beneficial to setting the initial mood. The contact, a ghost, has sent me to the warehouse where her dad worked. The warehouse turns out to be inhabited entirely by ghosts, and the clues suggest that it was raided and the workers killed. Hence, the ghostly population. An entry pop-up text window would help set the scene greatly - I suspect that most people would enter a warehouse expecting it to have live workers in it, and sense something to be rather wrong after entering.

The evidence that the Cabal was responsible for the massacre is troubling. It's been a while since I've run the canon Croatoa missions, but the Cabal never struck me as quite that cold-hearted. Still, I should see how the rest of the story develops before leaping to conclusions.

[u]Mission Three:[u]

I believe there is a misspelling in the send-off text for this mission, where the ghost uses the word "lieing." Typically, the gerund form of "to lie" is "lying."

This mission appears to introduce some custom enemies that are blended with existing Cabal enemies. The costuming fits the theme of the Cabal, which is good. However, the nature of these new enemies is that they are undead spirits of former Cabal members, bound to serve the living Cabal leaders. This again makes me question whether this fits in with the in-game canon. My impression has been that the Cabal traditionally practice weather-based magic, and necromancy seems an uncharacteristic step for a group that dedicates itself to fighting the Red Caps.

[u]Mission Four:[u]

By this point, it seems like this arc was written from the perspective that the Cabal as a whole is evil, with a callous disregard for life. Having also run the Katie Hannon Task Force, that really seems to run contrary to my impression of the Cabal.

Patrick Callihan, I note, has no descriptive flavor text, and ends up getting the default Minion text when I right-click on him.

The map is a bit large, but at least it's outdoors, and you give the enemies highly visible animations so that it's easier to track them down. Still, the four rituals to disrupt all have the same flavor text, which people may find repetitive. I'd personally recommend cutting it down to three. (Especially since three is a common numeric theme amongst witches.)

[u]Mission Five:[u]

You play fair, and warn the player that a big fight is coming up that might require allies. Always important to include that warning.

Adriana Callahan also has no descriptive text, and gets the generic Elite Boss description when right-clicked for Info.

Ordinarily, I am leery about including an Elite Boss as an ally, especially if it's a Custom Elite Boss. They often can be overpowered, and can overshadow the player's abilities. However, you seem to have chosen a reasonably balanced set of powers that keeps her from just mowing through the opposition.

I opt to collect both of the optional allies, and the big, bad Witchie goes down without much need for spending inspirations.

[u]In Conclusion:[u]

This arc shines primarily in the written work of its storytelling. The dialogue and characterization is very well crafted. And it tells a solidly entertaining story. It loses points in my personal taste, however, for appearing to diverge from how the Cabal is portrayed in the game itself.

Overall, I give it a solid four stars.

Review of [u]Small Fears[u], Arc ID# 12285, by TeChameleon.

Played solo by my lvl 41 Night Widow, pretending to be a hero.

[u]Mission One:[u]

No hero can turn down the pleas of a child in need, so your hook works fairly well. Though I'm not sure why the mission contact is feeling such a need to be so dramatically mysterious. Especially since he nearly slips up and reveals that he's among the kids that need to be rescued as well.

The mission map itself is a suitably creepy one, well-suited for the theme of childhood fears and nightmares. There's some nice bits of dialogue to foreshadow what may come later in the arc. Though I must say, the fact that it involves escorting three victims back to the entrance, through the course of a five-floor map, tends to make my own rescue maps look a bit tame by comparison. Ultimately, I was a bit non-heroic in handling this issue: after I rescued the second victim, I let my Night Widow fade back into stealth, and bolted ahead, leaving the victim whimpering alone until I could find the remaining victim three floors further up, and then retrace my steps and get both of them out safely.

It is quite the nifty map for pure style, however. Where is it located in the Architect files?

The custom critters are suitable creations for the representations of childhood fears. It's always fun to have an excuse to use the Rularuu weapons among multiple minions. Though I feel like the School Bullies hit WAY too hard compared to the other creatures, and the insect themes on the Mean Girls don't quite work for me. The latter is a comparatively minor stylistic quibble. (Though if I think more about it... mean girls = queen bees of the school, so maybe that's what you were shooting for.) But I do recommend scaling the bullies back on the power scale a bit.

It turns out that the contact who gave the mission actually was among the victims to be rescued. Which suggests that he's a kid with psychic powers (like his anonymous name further suggests), who was just as terrified to be in that place as the other kids. I can totally buy an explanation that he sent out something like an astral projection of himself to seek help, or whatever the explanation may be. It's harder for me to accept that he managed a theatrically mysterious introduction to the mission, however. Granted, you do provide a clue that explains [u]why[u] he didn't just up and say he was among the victims.

[u]Mission Two:[u]

Right off the bat, the mission bar says as one of the objectives, "Mother Mayhem must be here. Find her!" But it doesn't give an indication as to why that is, or how I would come to that conclusion.

It seems that you intend for the player to find the glowing box with the clue in it first, which does in fact provide strong evidence that Mother Mayhem is about. In which case I would suggest possibly making Mother Mayhem spawn only after the clue is found. As it was, I ended up blitzing past the clue (which was in a side room, and hence could be readily missed), and found and fought Mother Mayhem before finding the clue.

[u]Mission Three:[u]

So - it seems that Mother Mayhem somehow unleashed an even greater terror into this world, and it's time to take it down. Of course, exactly how Mother Mayhem brought a demon into this world is not made clear. Not saying that I disbelieve the possibility - I just wish I had a better understanding of how it was taking place.

I'm not sure if this was deliberate or not, but there seems to be a slightly different set of custom monsters in the group this time around, as compared to the previous two. I get to see the Closet Monster and the Clown monster for the first time in this mission, though I also see the Mean Girls and some of the other minions from the past 2 levels. At least the Bullies aren't present.

The mission ends up being pretty straightforward - get rid of the demon, and then get rid of Mother Mayhem when she shows up to reclaim the place that I've just cleaned out. There ends up being some backtracking, but not much.

Minor spelling error - when Mother Mayhem is finally defeated (again), she says, " No... the pupetteer... tangled in the strings..." The proper spelling should be "puppeteer."

[u]In Conclusion:[u]

Ultimately, I wish there were more storytelling detail. Granted, I understand that the contact is a frightened psychic child, and the trauma that he has experienced will make it harder to get a lucid story out of him. But I feel like the story is relying very heavily on my own imagination to fill in the blanks, which is a shame.

Unanswered questions include what brought Mother Mayhem back to Paragon City in the first place, since she's ordinarily a native of Praetorian Earth. Just how [u]did[u] the mission contact manage to contact me when he was being held captive by these demons of nightmares? By what means was the chief phobia able to enter this world, and just what did Mother Mayhem do that allowed it?

As someone who really appreciates a good story, I hunger for these sorts of details.

All in all, I give it 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

Sincere thanks for taking the trouble to rewrite that detailed review of Cutthroat Competition, TeChameleon.

Some assorted responses to your critiques and comments:

There seems to be a common opinion amongst players of all sorts that if a mission is going to require escorting characters to the mission entrance, it bloody well should be a short map to reduce what I call "the boredom factor." I generally agree with this sentiment. Of course, I think it's possible to make escort objectives more interesting. I've even seen examples in other people's arcs - such as triggering the creation of patrols and/or boss spawns after an escort is obtained, thereby ensuring that there will still be interesting fights and scenery on the trip back.

Still, given that my current arcs are near the filesize limitations, it'll be simpler to pick out some smaller maps. I'll see what I can do on that score. I'll also look into making Leroy the Janitor a freeable "hostage" in Mission Two, and all of the allies optional in Mission Four. Those are all completely reasonable changes that I can solidly get behind.

I'll also look into revisiting the in-game dialogue made by Face-Tailored Minmae in Mission Four, since I don't want players getting unnecessarily confused as to whether they're nurses or models. (And as a side note, I am utterly unfamiliar with Robotech, so any similarity to Minmei of that series is completely coincidental. Minmae was a reference to an NPC that appears in one of the CoV missions, Maemae van Whooters, who is listed as a B-movie actress in the sixties.)

Leroy's grumbling about how he's being forced to spawn on his knees being menaced by "captors" was an expression of my own frustration of a Mission Architect limitation that I doubt will be addressed any time soon. Namely, the fact that if you insert something like an Abomination, Dr. Vahzilok, or a Red Cap as an ally, you can't assign him any animation whatsoever. The Mission Architect simply will not let you.

Nevertheless, I'll cut out Leroy's remark that breaks down the "fourth wall," though I'll still be keeping the Dr. Vahz model for him. (This is in part due to the fact that I don't have room to design another custom enemy, partly because I like inserting Dr. Vahz as an ally, and partly because I've gotten some enthusiastically positive comments from other players about that particular design feature.)

I also have no problems, story-wise, with the CoT operating on the PTS grounds. The Cap au Diable Strike Force in City of Villains firmly establishes that they have no issues with conducting a large-scale raid on those very premises, and they even tried to bind Bat'Zul for their own purposes, and were extremely ticked off when the players interfered with their plans to do so.

And the plural of "passerby" is, in fact, passersby. Had that tidbit drilled into me in high school English. This is backed up on Dictionary.com as well.

At any rate, a playthrough and rating should be forthcoming later today.

Review of Threads, ID# 170506, by Co3O4.

Played through this one with my lvl 41 Night Widow, pretending to be a hero.

[u]Mission One:[u]

The initial hook for the story works just fine - a desperate student has seen one of his friends just ket kidnapped, and wants to rescue him. It's a little vanilla, but many fun stories derive from basic beginnings, especially when plot twists show that things are not what they seem.

The mission itself seems very straightforward. The boss seems to be from a Custom Group called the Horsemen, and has a custom description reflective of one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. So that provides some foreshadowing of what I can expect to face in the future.

The target of the rescue also has descriptive text, though I'm not sure why his having a fauxhawk would be a sign that I'm too late to help him. A sign of poor fashion sense, perhaps. But the pale skin, proclamations of the CoT that I'm too late, and the student's fearful running away after rescue are surely signs that something bad has already happened to him.

[u]Mission Two:[u]
Purely from a descriptive standpoint, I think there's a better way to phrase his current condition than to say, "Michael didn't sound like a Circle." I'm not sure how much room you have left on the briefing, but I'd suggest rewriting the sentence "Michael didn't sound like a Circle, so his mind should still be at least marginally in control" to something like "Michael's words and actions suggest that his mind is still at least marginally in control."

Looks like this next mission is a setup to find a MacGuffin to find Michael again. On a personal level, the setup feels a bit forced to me. The professor has a magic compass that will point to a person if you feed him a bit of DNA, and the student's Mom keeps a full kit of forensic samples of her student as a safe kit? Sounds like Mom always worried that her son would turn to a life of crime, and wanted to be prepared to help the police finger her son as a suspect.

I would typically suggest a simpler scenario for how to have a bit of DNA close at hand for the missing student. If you say that the mission contact and his friend are roommates, then it would be a pretty simple matter for the contact to collect a few strands of hair from his roommate's hairbrush or comb.

Another potential storytelling inconsistency - the mission contact says, in the briefing, that the compass is owned by his History teacher. He later says that said teacher is presently at the university, and that he thinks the teacher "teaches Latin or something." I recognize that professors can teach more than one class, but that just struck me as a little jarring.

At any rate, on to the mission itself... I discover an ally in the mission, whose descriptive text says that she's the cousin of the mission contact, and sister of the guy who was originally kidnapped. Which means that the mission contact and his friend are likely cousins as well.

True to my predictions, this mission has another one of the Horsemen as a Custom Boss. And the Circle of Thorns happens to be raiding the Midnight Club just as I'm seeking out the professor. It's not clear why, though. Admittedly, the clues show that the professor was researching CoT activity, which means that it's conceivable that the CoT would eventually butt heads with him, but having the CoT stage a coincidental raid on the Midnight Squad headquarters just feels a bit forced.

[u]Mission Three:[u]

Slight misspell in the mission briefing - when the contact sends you off, the descriptive text says that you have another friend who "scrys" the location of some Circle abductors. That should be spelled "scries."

So this mission involves rescuing some victims who have varying degrees of magical talent, and foiling a side plot of the Circle's to kill a bunch of people. It is also revealed that the Circle has a mage, Thanatos, who has found an easier way of possessing people that doesn't involve killing them first. That seems to contradict what seems to be the Circle's standard mode of operation. Every time I've even seen or interrupted a Circle possession ritual in-game, the target has been alive during the process.

[u]Mission Four:[u]

In the final battle against Thanatos, getting him down to a certain level of damage triggers an ally ambush that starts coming to help me, which is a pretty cool concept. Of course, there's a typo in what the Midnighter Dueller announces: "The [u]calvary[u] is on its way!" That should be "cavalry." You might also consider moving the trigger point for the ally ambush to an earlier spot in time. It took so long for the cavalry to come, I had finished off the Elite Boss by the time they arrived.

Okay... so, from what I see happening in this mission, Michael's will has been largely subverted by the soul that has been summoned into him to manifest another Horseman. So I suppose that's what you were getting at when you previously explained that the Circle had developed a new means of possessing bodies "without killing them." It seems that you mean the Circle is using a new means of possession that doesn't automatically expel the original soul/consciousness of the host body. And it means that the hero at least gets to walk away having successfully rescued the original victim. It would have been a real downer to have failed on that level, given the number of deaths we already had to wade through in the previous missions.

[u]Final Thoughts:[u]

On a purely technical and play-balanced level, the arc works fairly well. Nothing terribly overpowered, and you provide allies to help with the final Elite Boss. Spelling errors are minimal, and you provide descriptive text to the custom characters, which I always appreciate.

My critiques are primarily on the story-telling level, as listed above. Furthermore, while introducing custom characters themed on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is potentially cool, I wish there were more of a story reason for it. Granted, the Lady Grey Task Force is an example where some Horsemen-themed enemies are introduced without a story reason other than the presumed intimidation factor. So I probably shouldn't hold that against it too much.

I also am missing what connection there is between the title of the arc and the plot. I come away from the arc wondering why it's called "Threads."

Ultimately, I rated this arc at three stars.

Co3O4, Thanks for the review of "A Tooth For A Tooth." Since you rated it 4 stars, I'm curious as to what you would change or improve to make it better.

This arc, like all of my arcs, hits the filesize limit. That means I have to make some tough choices on what I keep and what I cut to squeeze out every precious .01% of space for text and the like. When it comes to interactive objectives, I typically cut the system text, but leave in the text that appears over the red interaction bar. I also put in a Clue that appears so that you know when you've found the key item. As the contact explains in the briefing, stealing the rest of the items is just for show, to keep people from guessing what you're really up to, and trying to interfere.

I'm curious as to just how important it is to players to have bosses spout dialogue in their fights. The Mission Two boss, indeed, doesn't say anything, though I could probably cut and tweak some dialogue here and there to make room for a line for him.

And yes, Custom mobs do tend to hit really hard and hurt really bad against lower-level characters. I'm still trying to figure out where the threshold is for making customs that are appropriate to certain level ranges.

In the final mission, if there's another hero other than Infernal available that would make a better choice (and less annoying to fight), I'm open to suggestions. I don't have enough filesize left to make a custom hero, and I didn't exactly want to try using Valkyrie. (In part because of how annoying her fights have been at later levels.)

As a side note, I'll mention that Positron played this particular arc, and left feedback saying that he enjoyed it, and might be able to Dev's Choice it if I edited the briefings to warn players that help might be needed on the final mission because of the difficulty of the villains. I've since made that change (though I suspect Positron's been too busy to get around to revisiting this arc, despite my PM). Nevertheless, I particularly welcome feedback on how others would improve this particular arc.

A playthrough and review of your arc should be forthcoming shortly.

Review of The Bravuran Jobs (ID# 5073), by GlaziusF

Every story begins with the Mission Contact, and I always enjoy it when said contact firmly establishes his own character through his own style of dialogue. The contact is established as a charming non-native speaker of English, and this works nicely for me.

The mission map is one that I don't recognize, but like the look of. I'd love to know which map it is in case I ever want to use it myself.

A minor quibble about the descriptive text for the Contessa: It reads, in part, "For a moment you wonder why Wyvern's after her, but then you realize - it's Wyvern. You pay, they shoot. At least if you're not an obvious ally of justice." That doesn't quite make sense to me - I would expect Wyvern to take my money and shoot where directed, provided that I wasn't an obvious ally of villainy. Or possibly provided that the target wasn't an obvious ally of justice.

Regardless, escorting the Contessa back to safety is a pretty painless task, thanks to the relative compactness of the map. Good design choice, here.

Mission Two:

Another advantage of having the mission contact be a non-native speaker is that I can turn my internal grammar corrector to "off," and enjoy his eccentricities. I like the fact that the briefing shows a clear villainous motivation, here.

Inside the mission, I see that two of the mission objectives are provided in light blue text. This leads me to guess that they might be optional goals, but we'll see if this is true.

Yep, looks like that's the case. Which is a good thing, given how awfully big this outdoor map is. Nevertheless, I rescued one of the farmers and took down the boss, who was in my way.

I like the characterization of the earth spirit, and the explanation that's given as to why he looks like a normal Red Cap. I only wish that, when I completed the mission, the clue gave more of a hint as to what he really looks like in his natural form.

Mission Three:

I begin to wonder if the contact is cagier than he lets on, and is merely putting on a deliberate show of innocence. Actually, I started wondering this a while ago. It's well-written, regardless.

Now I get to see a full custom group, filled with custom minions. They're well-designed, power-wise. Manageable in small chunks, but they can certainly overwhelm you if you're careless. (Which I was, in one instance - an ambush caught up to me as I was fighting another group.)

I'm not as enamored of the long passages of flavor text for these particular custom enemies. Several parts of them are repetitive, and it's a little annoying to pick out the new pieces of information from the wall of text.

Mission Four:

A pretty straightforward mission. Oddly enough, the main objectives all appeared in short order on the first floor, leaving the remaining two floors as purely optional. Dialogue for the Carnival party-crashers is well-written.

Mission Five:

And, thus it is that I find myself robbing the vaults of my own employer. Interesting. Ordinarily, even as a villain, I would choose to maintain a certain level of professionality. But given that the contact has [u]always[u] provided missions through feigning ignorant reading of the headlines, I'm guessing this is a challenge to something greater.

And, apparently, it is. You kinda have to admire the brazen charm of an employer who doesn't hold a little thing like robbery against you, and apparently is more interested in dueling you for the sport and challenge of it.

Conclusion: All in all, a fun arc, with some fun characterization. Purely on the level of personal taste, I wasn't a fan of what I found to be overly long custom minion descriptions, as noted above. Plus, I'm mildly disappointed that this wasn't a story that gradually built with each mission, but rather a series of separate but related vignettes, tied together in a single arc. But only mildly disappointed - there's definitely a fine place for fare such as this.

As a final note, I'm curious as to what steps you've taken to publicize your assorted arcs, each of which has an impressive number of playthroughs and ratings.

GlaziusF,

Thanks for your critique regarding "Fog of War." Humor is always difficult to pull off, and I appreciate your feedback.

Good catch on that typo, which I have since fixed. Something inevitably slips by, no matter how good the proofreading.

"Fog of War," like all of my published missions, hits the filesize cap. In fact, I've already done a bit of editing to try and make it less repetitive. I cut out patrol dialogue in its entirety from Mission 2, and managed to insert a "silent patrol" in Mission 1 after paring down text in the Mission Briefings.

Subsequent to your review, I've also cut the number of patrols in Missions Three and Four from eight, down to four. That should help alleviate the repetitive nature of the patrol dialogue. Unfortunately, since adding a "silent patrol" takes up a little over .35% of allowed filesize space, putting one in would require the cutting of significant amounts of text, or something else.

I'm somewhat torn about the lieutenants that can summon the Creeper Vines. The present limitations of the architect don't allow me to pick and choose individual powers for my custom enemies, or else I'd give them a selection that [u]doesn't[u] include the Carrion Creeper Vines. As it stands, those particular lieutenants have access to the Hard level of Plant Control, which grants them six or seven of the powers within that set. Cranking things down to Standard would give them only two. And that seems like a shameful sacrifice to make, though it may be necessary.

Personally, I never thought that Dr. Aeon viewed the Architect as a system for generating wealth and resources for himself. Especially after looking at his published memoirs, which note that: 1) The resources and manpower for AE came from Crey (suggesting to me that it's primarily a Crey cash cow, rather than an AeonCorp cash cow), 2) Part of his reasons for designing the AE was to toss a bone to his corporate sponsors (suggesting that he considers himself largely above mundane issues of corporate success), and 3) He considers the whole thing a scheme to benefit him and further his needs and goals. Plus, there are a number of instances where Aeon had to be reined in by Arachnos because of his self-serving schemes. So, yeah... I've typically considered Dr. Aeon to be so far gone down the route of mad science and personal arrogance that he'd have more than a few disconnects with things like balancing corporate profit against satisfying personal whims.

At any rate - I'm about to log on and play one of your arcs. A review should be forthcoming shortly.

Regrettably, TeChameleon, I have run a number of searches, and also searched the threads where I know I put my missions up for review, but have not found your feedback anywhere. And since I have had two of my reviews in different threads eaten by the "The form you have submitted is no longer valid" bug, I suspect this has happened to your review as well.

I have since vowed to highlight all text and select "Copy" when writing one of my reviews, as a precaution against losing them to this posting bug, ever again.

Regardless... TeChameleon, I don't want to force you through the effort of recomposing your entire review, but if you could give a very abbreviated summary of things you liked/disliked, that would be much appreciated. (Since part of the purpose of this is to help me learn how to improve my designs, and learn what storytelling styles do and don't work for broad audiences.)

Review of The Second Coming of the Mega Mech (#122274)

I soloed this on my lvl 40 bane spider, pretending to be a hero.

Mission One:

To start, I enjoy your custom mission contact, Viper Calhoun. A nice, edgy, Agent Indigo vibe to her that suits the feel of Striga Isle.

The first mission starts off straightforwardly enough, though I'd generally recommend shaving the interaction time for the glowing objects down by a second or two.

Thankfully, Burkholder is one of the more manageable AV-class enemies to face when solo.

Dr. Jansen seems rather off his kilter, though. Given his ominous rantings, I feel like most heroes would ask, "Why are we letting this guy go, again?"

Mission Two:

This is a nicely structured mission. You capture the feel of a raid on a Sky Raider warehouse, with a fun blend of cross-faction battles and patrols.

Again, there's a lot of red herring glowing objects to search, and I'd generally recommend shaving down the interaction time for these, too.

This time I have to fight Dr. Jansen, which simply confirms my initial suspicions of him. It grates a little when you have to fight someone that you didn't feel comfortable letting go in the first place.

The new custom group is nicely designed, complete with flavor descriptive text and costumes evocative of the Council theme.

Mission Three:

This mission got a little repetitive and annoying, what with the multiple clickable boxes that were red herrings. Especially on a Council base cave map, which has all sorts of nooks and crannies that can hide glowing objectives.

It was also a bit much to have the objective of "blowing up the base" accomplished by beating on a pile of explosives until it, well... exploded. I'm more used to setting bombs that will presumably detonate AFTER I've left the base.

Mission Four:

The final mission occurs on the Giant Mech map, which is only right and proper. It's a wonderful map.

The final Archvillain is also quite soloable due to not having a Defensive Set. Naturally, I used inspirations to survive what were presumably hard-hitting attacks, but he went down without too much trouble.

The final mission debriefing is a bit disconcerting, though. It prompts two reactions: 1) "What agency do you work for, again?" and 2) "So just why DO chicks dig giant robots?"

Ultimately, the arc makes for a fun beatdown. But the cultlike activity of the group trying to activate the Giant Mech leaves me scratching my head, not sure if this arc is trying to be mostly serious, or mostly tongue-in-cheek. I guess part of that reaction is my not being used to seeing cults organized around worshiping an object of technology. I'm also uncertain how such a cultish subculture could develop within the Council without being noticed and stamped out BY the Council.

Thanks for the critique, Moran. By and large, they are all points that I agree with. Regrettably, like many authors, I find myself suffering from a lack of any more filespace. (Right up at 99.99%) This means that putting in one new feature would come at the expense of removing another.

I do plan on revisiting this arc as soon as they give greater customizability to selection of powers for the custom creatures. One of the unfortunate limitations of the system is that for some powersets (particularly control-based powersets), the Standard difficulty grants only two powers, while the Hard difficulty suddenly jumps to six or seven. I really look forward to being able to tweak custom powersets so that custom enemies can be given more diversity, without necessarily giving them access to the more annoying powers.

I'd like to add an arc to your queue, when you get around to playing it:

Arc 10171 - "Cutthroat Competition"
Intended for villains between level 15 and 20.

Synopsis: A routine collection for the Facemaker swiftly escalates into all-out war with another faction over harvest rights to the limited resource pool of innocent victims.

This mission is intended to be solo-friendly, with a couple of allies to help with the climactic final mission.

If the good doctor (er... evil doctor?) wouldn't mind earning operating cash from the Facemaker, then I would like to recommend the following arc to his attention:

Arc ID 10171 - "Cutthroat Competition" - suggested level range 15-20, and solo friendly. In which a simple collection mission for the Facemaker swiftly escalates into all-out war with a rival faction over harvesting rights to the limited resource pool of innocent victims.

I typically try to read everything. The mission text and the custom enemy flavor text are usually the big, easy things to focus on.

Clues are a little more hit-and-miss for me, because as they pile up, I need to scroll through the group of clues to find the new material. However, sometimes I find missions where stuff that appears in the clue descriptions is not summarized in the mission debriefings. In which case going over the clue text is a good thing, because it helps fill in details that I would otherwise miss.

Objects in missions tend to get the least attention from me, unless it's really something out of place and cries out for an explanation.

But in general, yeah. Words matter to me. They tell the story, and add further variety to the game. They keep the game fresh and interesting.

So... what happens when two people review the same arc, one after another?