Frozen_Northman

Heh - last time I tried this, I started writing a very detailed mission critique, and ended up getting ninja'ed by someone else and my post being invalidated. So I'm going to post a very SHORT review first, and later edit the post with a more involved review.

I reviewed:

Freaks, Geeks and Men in Black (#161629)

In short, it was well worth 5 stars. Great dialogue, and a wonderful proof of the fact that you don't need to make a custom faction in order to make a great mission arc.

More detailed commentary to come forth when I edit the post. But for now...

While I'd be happy to receive a review on any of the arcs in my sig, I'd like to specifically ask for one for Fog of War, (ID 138914). It's five missions long, and I recommend running it with level 40+ characters. The last mission has 2 standard Elite Bosses, so a team may be advisable. (Or at least a resilient solo character.)

************

Herein begins the more detailed commentary:

I liked the contact right off the bat, as the author showed a true gift for writing dialogue for a reformed Freakshow.

The first mission involved one of my most hated regular enemies, the Knives of Artemis (and their caltrop-spamming ways). Still, it was on a small map, which made it much easier to bear.

Through the course of playing this mission I saw that quite a bit of detail was lavished on the assorted clues. I heartily approve of such professional attention to detail. This also goes for the text boxes for mission entry and exit. Very nice job. And I suppose that's one of the advantages of not using lots and lots of Custom enemies - it leaves you with more room to be ABLE to dedicate that kind of attention to the flavor text.

The next mission again makes the Knives of Artemis more palatable by including Freakshow amongst the enemies. The author shows skill at humor in this mission as well, particularly with 'Teh Crush1n4t0r.' (Apologies if I didn't get that name exactly right.) Thankfully, Crushinator's attackery was no match for my mightitude... er... ahem.

Mission Three brings in the Knives' typical prom dates, the Malta Group. Which is another group that I normally hate fighting, but the author once again does an exceptional job with their secret-code-speak dialogue, especially in the boss fights that trigger ambushes. It really maintains a professional feel to it.

Another aspect that I enjoy is that when the mission provides allies, they're strong enough to be helpful, while not so powerful as to completely overshadow my own character's abilities.

The plot unfolds nicely through the rest of the missions, and the clues fill everything in nicely.

A very, very minor gripe is that the final map is so large, it takes a while to find the objectives. Which in turn means dealing with a lot of Malta. But that's hardly a blemish on what is an exceptionally strong story.

Aliana_Blue, you certainly raise an interesting point, though .37% quickly rises to a significant amount of text. One of the challenges I always face when writing an arc is deciding on what text isn't really necessary, and can be cut to make for a few more hundreths or tenths of file space. Still, I'll take a look at my arc, and see what is tweakable.

And for those people hungering for reviews - my queue is open! Sure, I'm relatively late to the party, with so many other reviewers out there, but I'll definitely give you an honest, thoughtful, and detailed review in exchange for a play and review by you.

I've added my own link to the queue:
[ QUOTE ]
Arranged in alphabetical order for fairness and ease of use:
Bayani
Bubbawheat (QPQ)
Burning_Brawler (QPQ)
DeviousMe (QPQ)
Dominemisis (QPQ)
Dragonslay
Frozen_Northman (QPQ)
HolyEvilAoD
Lazarus (QPQ)
Misho (QPQ)
Peacemoon (QPQ)
Policewoman (QPQ)
Rapulis
ridiculous_girl (QPQ)
Sooner (QPQ)
Talen_Lee
Venture

EU reviewers
Col.Blitzkrieger
Leese
Master_Zaprobo

Note: QPQ = quid pro quo: Play and rate/give feedback to the reviewer first in order to get a review on your arc, some are more lenient on this than others.

Also, Master Zaprobo's is an awesome idea, someone here should do something similar.

[/ QUOTE ]

Addressing Aliana_Blue's comment about filesize for my mission, "Fog of War":

Fog of War, like both of my other arcs, uses all of the alotted filesize. Adding anything further could only be accomplished at the expense of cutting out something else.

Of course, I recognize that having lots of patrols with the same text can get quite repetitive. As such, I welcome recommendations on whether I should cut down on the number of patrols, or cut out the dialogue entirely in certain instances.

Aliana_Blue, thanks for your detailed review of "Fog of War." I'll address some of your comments in a separate post.

In the meantime, however, I shall immediately provide the review that I promised in exchange for yours...

Review of Arc 1589, "Of Mentors And Legacy"

Mission 1:

This is a nice use of a bait-and-switch to set the story hook. The contact sets the "expected" storyline, which is then switched to something different, thus piquing my interest for the developing story.

I did groan a bit when I saw that this first mission relied on finding a glowing object on an Oranbega map. Past experience has had me spending long periods of time searching every nook and cranny on such maps for glowing objects. Ultimately, I fell victim to my own assumptions. The glowing object spawned on a wide open room in the middle of the map, and wasn't too hard to find. I had erroneously assumed that it would appear near the end room, and deliberately superjumped ahead in search of it. On the other hand, this allowed me to fight the optional boss that you had included, which was a nice touch.

Mission 2:

At the start of this mission, I've made sure to review the clues that you left for me from Mission 1. You've put a fine amount of attention into crafting those clues, and using them to help the story. This is the sort of effort that I greatly appreciate in arcs.

I see that you opted to create multiple instances of the same Boss enemy throughout this particular map. It's a fairly nice implementation of this tool, although I found the boss dialogue a bit repetitive after the third or fourth iteration, and started skipping past the bosses after that.

The fight with the boss also involved summoning an ambush in the middle of the fight, which I always find tricky to implement well. Like many other instances, the ambush ultimately arrived after I had disposed of the boss and his starting minions. You might consider moving the spawning condition to earlier in the boss fight.

Mission Three:

Nice use of cascading objectives on this map, and the map is well-chosen to your purpose. One of the objectives involves saving six captives, and since every captive is guarded by a group that is different from the regular enemy spawns, this makes them easier to find. This is a huge plus, in my opinion. Of course, the six captives and their captors all seemed to share the same dialogue, so this also began to run a bit on the repetitive side.

Rescuing the captives resulted in the spawning of a boss, who I found without too much difficulty. Fighting him also prompted an ambush, which arrived well before the fight was over. In fact, since the boss happened to spawn in the chasm part of the map, and the ambushers were fliers with ranged attacks, this actually made for a nifty dynamic as the fight progressed. This may have been mostly due to chance, since it's an outdoor map. Nevertheless, I enjoyed how the fight worked out.

Mission Four:

So - having jumped through the hoops that the Ouroboros Mender has asked of me, it's time to see the results of my handiwork... And it's full of Nemesis troops! I will confess, my natural reaction to this was, "Ye Gods. It must be Yet Another Nemesis Plot." Of course, it later becomes clear that it's not really a Nemesis plot - merely an instance of Nemesis naturally filling a void that was left open.

This mission is a nice example of using separate instances of single patrols with different bits of dialogue to set the mood. It's a tool that I would have liked to use in my own "Fog of War" arc, and in fact originally had started off implementing... but I had to cut the separate dialogue patrols because I ran out of space.

You choose a nice, linear progression of maps in which to hunt for the clues, which I appreciated. Maps with multiple elevator branches in which to hunt down clues can get frustrating.

Mission Five:

So - by this point, I've discovered that mucking with the timestream purely at the promptings of notes from an alleged Ouroboros Mender rarely have the effect that I would hope for. I really shouldn't be surprised.

The first two allies in this mission seem fairly well-balanced. Both of them are Boss-caliber, and they both seem to hold their own against enemies without me just sitting back and watching them do all the heavy lifting. It was harder to make that judgment with respect to the third ally, however. He showed up as an Elite Boss, but because one of the other allies relies on Storm Control powers, it became hard for me to even [u]see[u] my latest ally.

I'll take a moment to note that I was playing this mission solo on Difficulty level 2, which meant that any Archvillains showed up as Elite Bosses. Ultimately, this suited me just fine, and I felt that the flow of the battles was quite reasonable.

I don't know if this was due to chance, or the nature of the map that was chosen, but the last two Named Bosses both ended up spawning in the same room. And since defeating one was a condition for spawning the other, this suited me just fine.

Epilogue:

This mission arc included a souvenir, which also really helps in wrapping up the story in a satisfying manner. The arc as a whole was interesting in that more of the story was told through the clues and dialogue bubbles than through the mission briefings and debriefings.

Ultimately, I rated the arc with five stars. You paid a lot of attention into making sure that all of the descriptive text was polished and free of errors, and made sure that things shouldn't get too frustrating. There were a few instances were progressing through the arc got a little bit repetitive, but nothing major.

I've enjoyed seeing these types of threads develop, and I like being able to give and receive detailed feedback, so I'm starting my own.

How it works:

Play any one of my three listed arcs that sounds interesting to you. Rate it honestly, and post your Arc ID with your feedback. In return, I'll play your listed arc, rate it honestly, and post a review on this thread.

Admittedly, one or two of my arcs may be best played with one or more teammates - I'll point that out in the description. So if you play one of my arcs with teammates, and those teammates ALSO have arcs of their own, and give my arc an honest rating and tell me their Arc IDs... I'll play and review theirs as well.

Feel free to ask me to play an arc that benefits from team play when you ask for a review - I will do my level best to round up some of my regular teammates so that we can play it together. Just make sure to point out in your request if I should assemble teammates before running it.

So... here are my arcs. Hope you enjoy!

Arc Title: Cutthroat Competition
Arc ID: 10171
Description: A simple collection task for the Facemaker soon escalates into all-out war with a rival faction over harvest rights to the limited pool of innocent victims. Four missions, all capping off at about level 20. Designed to be solo-friendly.

Arc Title: A Tooth For A Tooth
Arc ID: 10173
Description: A centuries-old dwarf seeks help from villains to rebuild his influence in the modern age. Elements of Scandinavian mythology are incorporated. I recommend playing this arc with characters of level 25 or above. I also recommend having a team - especially for the last mission. The final mission has two Archvillain-class enemies, and auto-scales down to level 20 because of the particular enemies involved.

Arc Title: Fog of War
Arc ID: 138914
Description: Fantasy gamers have been hacking the Mission Architect system, and AeonCorp is hiring you to help repel the hackers and get to the bottom of the disturbance. Deliberately designed as a humorous spoof of fantasy games. The final mission includes two standard Elite Bosses, so squishier toons may need a teammate or two. I also recommend that this arc be played by characters level 40 or higher.

I want story when I play, and I focus on story when I write my arcs. If great rewards are a side effect, then that's nifty, but generally coincidence.

I've had this same issue occur to me. There are some mobs, for some factions, that simply do NOT give you the option to assign them an animation if you're inserting them as an ally.

Just a few examples from personal experience:
Abominations
Dr. Vahzilok
Red Cap Fiends

All three of the above, when I've attempted to insert them into missions as an ally, have only granted the option to assign the animation of the surrounding enemy group, and nothing else. There simply is no option to give certain allies any animation other than the default kneeling animation.

I tend to share Darkonne's views on this point. Naturally, I fully respect the CoH business model for releasing separately-purchasable costume packs, which are quite affordable and help fund the speedier development of new free releases.

However, like Darkonne, I had thought that the Mission Architect editor would be a nifty means of playing with the costume pieces before having actually bought the costume pack. A hands-on form of advertising, if you will.

Besides which, the editor lets us play around with other costume pieces and weapon sets that we haven't necessarily unlocked yet for use on our playable toons - the Vanguard and Rularuu sets come immediately to mind.

I'll still probably purchase the Magic pack in any event, as $10 is not a particularly crippling fee. But I still wanted to respectfully register my disappointment.

I was wondering if anybody knew if the recently released costume pieces through the Magic Booster upgrade were available to be unlocked and used in the Mission Architect system for custom critters.

I checked earlier today with one of my toons that had about 2000 tickets in reserve, but there was no option to unlock those costume pieces. Nor did those costume pieces immediately show up when I tried to create a new character in the MA editor.

Of course, I haven't yet purchased the Magic Booster upgrade, though I eventually plan to. I just didn't know if that was a prerequisite to being able to unlock those costume pieces via the MA editor.

I recently returned to this issue through a "brute-force" test - I attempted to create a duplicate of one of my published arcs by recreating it from scratch. Doing so resulted in an over-sized arc, which I am nevertheless given the option of publishing.

Nevertheless, the same arc is still under the size limit on Test.

Arc Name: A Tooth For A Tooth
Test Mission ID# 19856 (File size 99.65%)
Live Mission ID# 10173 (File size 102.04%)

An unfortunate side-effect of this file-bloating bug is that while I've been able to [u]publish[u] this arc on Live, I cannot Edit and Republish it. If I wanted to Edit and Republish the active story, I'd have to cut enough material to bring it back down below 100% on Live, or else Unpublish it, edit the original Local file, and Publish that again - thereby losing all of the ratings that I've received thus far.

This is depressing, since I was fortunate enough to get some Dev feedback saying that he enjoyed the arc, and what I could do to edit it to possibly make it worthy of a Dev's Choice. And the edit in question would be really simple to do, pretty much just changing some of the briefing text to warn that the final mission will probably require some teammates to handle. But I can't make that change without either gutting my story of a lot more text than should be necessary, or just unpublishing it and starting again.

I enjoy both giving and receiving detailed, honest feedback, so I'll submit my arcs for review. I look forward to your playing either or both, as may suit your preference.

Arc Name: Cutthroat Competition
Arc ID: 10171

Creator Global Name: @Frozen Northman

Faction: Storyline is for villains. Vahzilok as allies, Circle of Thorns and Custom Critters as enemies.

Difficulty Level: Can be soloed, as allies have been inserted to help with the big final mission. Level range is roughly 15-22. Of course, the CoT can be annoying at this level range, so solo support-class types at lower levels may have difficulty.

Synopsis: A simple task from the Facemaker to round up a batch of live organ donors swiftly escalates into all-out war with another faction for the limited resource pool of innocent victims.

Estimated Time To Play: Four missions, runs from 30 minutes to an hour solo on Difficulty level 2.

Link to Feedback

Arc Name: A Tooth For A Tooth
Arc ID: 10173

Creator Global Name: @Frozen Northman

Faction: Storyline is for villains. Enemies include the Midnighter's Club, Trolls, and Custom Enemies.

Difficulty Level: Initial feedback suggests that a team is advisable. The final mission auto-scales to levels 15-20, and includes a Hero and a customized Archvillain. (Both of whom would scale to Elite Boss level on solo or for low difficulties, but that could still be a rough challenge for certain characters.)

Synopsis: A centuries-old dwarf seeks to rebuild his power and influence in the modern age, taking vengeance as he does so. Elements of Scandinavian mythology are incorporated.

Estimated Time To Play: Mission 1 is lvl 14-33, Missions 2 and 3 are lvl 1-54, and Mission 4 is lvl 15-20. The first two missions should go by pretty quickly. Missions 3 and 4 will take some more time to get through.

Link to Feedback

[/ QUOTE ]

I thought I'd also take the opportunity to give some public kudos to PoliceWoman on Arc 1388, "Celebrity Kidnapping."

While it's a short, three-mission arc, it really works well for the story that it tells. It makes excellent use of existing CoH maps and enemy groups, with a judicious sprinkling of Custom Enemies.

The first mission, which involves a breakout on the Zig map, is very well-crafted to set the atmosphere. There are roving bands of Prisoners who fight roving groups of Paragon Police and Longbow. This is a really great touch that makes for a much more immersive mission.

The identity of the Celebrity prisoner is a fun, satirical jab at a modern-day celebrity, and that style of humor really works for me. (Humor is hard to do well, and I greatly respect it when it works.) Furthermore, her "rescue" triggers an ambush of Paparazzi custom enemies, and the choice of low-level Illusion powers to simulate photography flashes is a marvelous inspiration.

The second mission was straightforward and quick - not mind-blowingly memorable, but a fine transition between the first and third missions, where the real meat of the story and humor are found.

The third mission involves the inevitable falling-out between the kidnapping factions. It takes place on a short map, and yet accomplishes a good deal on said map. There's a nice use of animation choices, here, and some humorous bits of dialogue.

Grabbing the celebrity kidnappee simultaneously triggers another paparazzi ambush, as well as spawns some PPD bosses along the return route. I suspect this is why the small warehouse map is such an excellent choice, as it pretty much guarantees a series of fights on the way back to the entrance, to keep things interesting. And... it also has a guest-star appearance by PoliceWoman, the author, as a custom Boss. (PoliceWoman showed up as the last Boss that I had to fight on the way back to the entrance, which I presume was a fine example of choosing her spawning point to be near the Front of the mission.)

And, of course, the final debriefing with good old Willy Weaver brought comforting closure like a soft, warm blanket.

Nice job on this one! Definitely earned five stars.

Thanks for the detailed review, PoliceWoman! And let me add that I heartily approve of your addition to the initial Mission Briefing for "Axis and Allies." It really helps set the flavor for the whole arc.

Cutthroat Competition was my first attempt at an arc, so there were a few stumbles along the way. It comes VERY close to the filesize limit, and problems are further compounded by a strange bug in which the apparent size of an arc seems to "grow" when you copy the files from Test over to Live. Hopefully, the Devs will be able to fix that bug soon, and I'll be able to look into making some tweaks to further polish things. Even so, adding one thing will likely have to be at the expense of removing another. It can be finessed, but it can be kinda tough. A single line of dialogue can take a few precious points of filesize, so they need to be used with care.

In Mission 2, the animations for the Vahzilok allies start running up against the limits of what I can choose from the options. From regular CoH missions, I seem to recall a standard "fight scene" in which it appears that a possible ally, and an enemy near him, are fighting one another mano a mano. Sadly, those animations do not seem present through the Mission Editor, so I did the best I could to make the Reaper and Mortificator look like they were putting up resistance. In another bizarre feature, Abominations as allies cannot be given ANY animations at all, unlike other allies. If you insert an Abomination as an ally, the only animation you can specify is what the nearby enemies are doing. And the abomination will default to the "kneeling captive" animation. A lamentable limitation of the Editor, I regret to say.

The insertion of Leroy the CoT Janitor was a bit of me being silly. I was aware of the legend of "Leroy Jenkins" from WoW, and that CoV sometimes uses "Operative Jenkins" as a possible reference to that character. Leroy was my attempt to add symmetry to that reference. I'll admit, though, I love the fancier name you suggest - "Leroy the Sanitation Mage." Maybe that's how he lists himself on his resume...

Here's another bit of history with Leroy the CoT Janitor - in an earlier version of the Architect on Test, it was possible to give him a "paintspray" animation, which I found hilarious - it was like he was futilely using a can of Lysol disinfectant in the sewers. But after one of the patches, this animation mysteriously disappeared, and I don't know why.

The ambush during the Ruin Mage fight is only a single ambush, though rescuing Leroy also triggers one. Since Ruin mages are quite the headache at that level, I might simply cut out the Ruin Mage's ambush and his reference to the same, which would coincidentally give me a little more space to add things like a souvenir and such.

Adding a line to Stratus the Overseer makes perfect sense, and I shall attempt to do so. He was inserted as an "optional boss" in Mission 3, because I needed [u]something[u] in that mission to cap the level range so that the CoT wouldn't all suddenly jump to a higher level than the other missions.

Glad you liked the allies that I added into the final mission. "Leroy the Former Janitor" does indeed use the Archvillain, Dr. Vahzilok for the body and powerset. One of the nifty aspects of the Mission Architect is that you can pick a standard CoH enemy as a Boss or Ally, but then change his name and flavor text. I was really happy how that part came off. And while this particular "ally" is technically an Archvillain, his powers don't scale to berserk levels like custom critters can, so I felt it worked reasonably well on that level.

I ultimately did a lot of balancing and rebalancing of that final mission with the three allies. If people really feel that having to round up all the allies is too onerous, I could probably make the allies optional goals. But part of my goal was to let there be some fun, cinematic combat as you gathered the allies, without requiring a horrendous "Defeat All" mission goal.

Another interesting tidbit - putting in Dr. Vahzilok as an ally, as with using an Abomination, does not allow you to assign him any animations. This is why, to my chagrin, he appears to be at the mercy of the CoT enemies that spawn near him. (It's also why I have him gripe when you initially find him, "You'd think the Mission Architect would give me a better default animation, dangit...")

Glad you enjoyed the arc!

One thing I noticed when playing through this arc was that there are repeated references to "the furor." I didn't know if this was a deliberate attempt to end-run around a possible trademark or copyright or what have you, but the traditional German spelling (absent the availability of an umlaut) would be "Fuehrer," which translates to "leader."

I heartily endorse this arrangement. Forming a group of mutual reviewers seeking substantive commentary is a wonderful idea. I'll happily contribute - both in feedback, and in stories of my own.

Arc Name: Cutthroat Competition
Arc ID: 10171

Creator Global Name: @Frozen Northman

Faction: Storyline is for villains. Vahzilok as allies, Circle of Thorns and Custom Critters as enemies.

Difficulty Level: Can be soloed, as allies have been inserted to help with the big final mission. Level range is roughly 15-22. Of course, the CoT can be annoying at this level range, so solo support-class types at lower levels may have difficulty.

Synopsis: A simple task from the Facemaker to round up a batch of live organ donors swiftly escalates into all-out war with another faction for the limited resource pool of innocent victims.

Estimated Time To Play: Four missions, runs from 30 minutes to an hour solo on Difficulty level 2.

Link to Feedback

Arc Name: A Tooth For A Tooth
Arc ID: 10173

Creator Global Name: @Frozen Northman

Faction: Storyline is for villains. Enemies include the Midnighter's Club, Trolls, and Custom Enemies.

Difficulty Level: Initial feedback suggests that a team is advisable. The final mission auto-scales to levels 15-20, and includes a Hero and a customized Archvillain. (Both of whom would scale to Elite Boss level on solo or for low difficulties, but that could still be a rough challenge for certain characters.)

Synopsis: A centuries-old dwarf seeks to rebuild his power and influence in the modern age, taking vengeance as he does so. Elements of Scandinavian mythology are incorporated.

Estimated Time To Play: Mission 1 is lvl 14-33, Missions 2 and 3 are lvl 1-54, and Mission 4 is lvl 15-20. The first two missions should go by pretty quickly. Missions 3 and 4 will take some more time to get through.

Link to Feedback

At present, in order to limit the level range of a particular mission within an arc, you need to insert either a basic enemy, ally, boss, etc. that caps at a desired level.

If you have a mission full of CoT that is currently ranging from levels 1 to 54, you could easily cap that by inserting a "Defeat a Boss" objective and choosing an enemy from the Circle of Thorns enemy list that caps off at the level that you desire.

I have just verified the trick suggested by Powerforge, with both of my arcs. (Regrettably, this meant that I had to unpublish one of my arcs to verify the test.)

Just as Powerforge described, I re-copied my files over from the Test folder to the Live folder. On the Live servers, both missions "seemed" to have grown above the file size limit. I then chose to "Edit" my missions, simply chose "Save and Exit," and then was given the option to Publish those missions. And what's more, I could play them as published missions.

Test Mission 1 ID# 15467
Live Mission 1 ID# 10171 (This mission has included some minor edits based on player feedback.)

Test Mission 2 ID# 19856
Live Mission 2 ID# 10173 (This mission is effectively unchanged from the original on Test.)

Another example of an Increased Arc Size:

Test Server ID: 19856

Live Server ID: 5388

To get it small enough to publish on Live, I had to cut out patrols from one mission, and pare down lots of text and dialogue to drop it by a few percentage points.

Same problem here. For Dev reference:

Test Server mission ID: 15467

Live Server mission ID: 2774

Please note that for the Live Server mission, I had to cut out elements that previously existed in the Test Server mission, to get it small enough that it could be published.

Title: A Tooth For A Tooth
Arc ID: 19856
By: @Frozen Northman
Villainous
Level Range: Mission 1 is 14-33, Missions 2 and 3 are 1-54, and Mission 4 is 15-20.

A centuries-old dwarf seeks to rebuild his power and influence in the modern age, taking vengeance as he does so. Elements of Scandinavian mythology are incorporated.

Link To Feedback

I'd welcome feedback, especially on the difficulty of the villains. Mission 3 includes a custom Elite Boss, and Mission 4 includes a custom Archvillain. (Though the Archvillain will spawn as an Elite Boss if you solo it.)

Arc Name: Cutthroat Competition
Arc ID: 15467 (I had to republish it due to bugs that came up with the most recent patch to the Test Server.)
Faction: Villains
Creator Global/Forum Name: @Frozen Northman
Difficulty Level: Introduces some custom enemies halfway through the arc, and includes an Elite Boss at the end. However, also provides allies to make the Elite Boss manageable.
Synopsis: A simple task from the Facemaker to round up a batch of live organ donors swiftly escalates into all-out war with another faction for the limited resource pool of innocent victims.
Estimated Time To Play: Four missions, runs from 30 minutes to an hour solo on Difficulty level 2.
Link To Feedback/Discussion: Arc 15467: Cutthroat Competition Feedback

[u]The Good[u]:

Zombie Invasions, when they occur, are an entertaining kill-fest. The attention to graphics and sound effects are to be highly commended.

The increased rate of being able to knock on doors for Trick-or-Treating is a welcome change of pace. I heartily endorse a continued stream of activity.

[u]The Bad[u]:

As has been previously and repeatedly posted, the spawning rate for Spirits is abysmally low. I can understand the lower rates for Vampires and Werewolves, since they require fewer kills to get the badge. But the Spirit spawns are unnaturally low. I cannot help but wonder if this contributes to players clicking on a door and leaving the spawn behind - players won't much care to fight enemies if they've already reached their quotas for zombies, witches, vampires, and werewolves.

Likewise, I feel that the rare spawning rate of Jack-In-Irons doesn't serve any point, save frustration.

For she is the Pirate Queen!
(She is! Hurrah for the Pirate Queen!)
And she's the most glorious thing I've seen, to be a Pirate Queen!
Yarr, she be the Pirate Queen!
(She is! Hurrah for the Pirate Queen!)
And she's the most glorious thing I've seen, to be a Pirate Queen!
(She is! Hurrah for the Pirate Queen, Hurrah for the Piiii-raaaaaaaaate Queen!)

YARR!

Like several others, I am disappointed by the price tag attached to the new costume options. I would consider something closer to $4.99 to be fair value, but $9.99 seems overpriced.