GlaziusF

@GlaziusF

Running this on a mid-teens broadsword/shield scrapper, old Heroic difficulty but with bosses on.

---

"Someone has a problem that's generally beneath the notice of heroes. Can you investigate her? I'd do it myself, but she's beneath my notice."

Are you sure that's how you want to start things out, contact?

Well, this is a roughly street level arc, so let's do this.

(also "coughs" doesn't take an E, first paragraph)

Oh. The actual mission briefing is in the opening clue. That's... something I haven't seen done before. Mostly because I've been habituated to the mission being set up in the briefing, so in this case mission 1 would be stalking the streets of/an abandoned warehouse in Kings Row to find the person who needs my help.

Parking somebody as a hostage on the first floor of one of those office-to-underground maps might work?

And the busy message seems to indicate my contact has plot cancer. Joy.

The map is a pretty standard Lost warehouse. The shrines to their Rikti overlords are a nice touch.

The end boss talks about the "teacher" who gave him his powers, but I don't get the clue for defeating him until I look behind the crates to find a minion who's been hiding. It seems sensible to make the objective boss-only.

Ah. Dude I was looking for drank the kool-aid. That's a thing that happens.

Oddly enough, interjecting the contact dialogue with my character's explicit responses feels more invasive and less genuine than that old Ninja Gaiden standby, "...".

---

Interesting. Isaac is not gone, only changed.

(also this is the point where the names became familiar so I went looking after badges, and I've got the history plaques open in another tab)

Interesting use of... what, is it ally/nearest door with the "out of range" text set?

But given the cultish nature of the Lost I can't imagine "why is it screaming like that?" is an appropriate response for them. At the very least use "he", but it needs to be wrapped up in prettier language. "Brother! The ordeal will being you closer to the gods!" or somesuch.

Another group with an earlier transformation refers to the victim as a "specimen". That's even worse.

I can appreciate wanting to have multiple sets of dialogue on the captives, but both the early and late transformations gave me an identical clue when I intervened.

Minor typo in the barrels: "You find the barrel itself immensely heavy as you lift of it's rusting lid..." should just end "lift its rusting lid".

Also you'd think after the fourth barrel or so I'd stop being horrified, but the system text begs to differ.

Anyway, I defeat Ishmael but he teleports out, dropping a device which I... somehow understand to be a psychic dampener?

Maybe it can be a jury-rigged one stolen from DATA that still has the label on it.

Hang on. The debrief says that my contact was heading for the monorail sewers, but that's where I went.

---

Next briefing is a bit hard to work within the admittedly imperfect model of the MA - the "busy text" can be seen at any time after you've taken the mission. Makes it awkward to work out what to do with it in cases when your contact comes with you.

Names need to be set off with commas in the dialogue. This includes pronouns and epithets like "child".

Huh. My contact's a psyker. I would have expected, y'know, COLD.

I frob a bookcase and find an assortment of books. Listing their titles in the clue might paint a better picture than discussing their subject matter.

One boss with dialogue on getting whittled down with a clue to drop was fine. I've found two other copies of him on the way up, though, which approaches overkill.

One of the bosses (a Pariah model) makes a threat on my life, and the clue on defeat mentions the building getting bombed. Seems that'd be better in the system text, especially as the clue itself is fourth from the bottom in the list of clues.

(Clues appear in the same order on the clue screen as their associated objectives do in the mission design. Objectives can be dragged and dropped to rearrange them.)

---

Interesting progression. The building doesn't come down right away, so now it's a race against time to get out.

...I was expecting more of an abandoned office look than a CoV one.

I find four bombs kicking around the first room. They've been shielded, but my contact suggests relocating them to blow my way out.

Did you want them to be nearly invisible against the walls and cave floor, or was that just an unhappy accident?

I find some hostages, mostly in the caves, then get notified there are more of them -- must be topside, so I head up there.

And after that, or perhaps after I rescued the Grimm Fairy in an unheralded objective in the end room, I have to place some number of psychic inhibitors? In bookcases?

Ah, reading the clues I can kind of see what you were going for? But CoH isn't set up to do the kind of "we can tell how you completed the mission" thing you have going here.

The contact is apprehensive that we may have to off the pariah, but she certainly didn't give me any warnings about treating him gently in the second mission -- or the third, for that matter.

---

Okay, so this is the last mission... we're at the facility in Kings Row, I guess? Usually the opening text has at least paid lip service to the city zone we're operating in. When the CoT mage spoke up about the tower the Lost were building in Perez Park I thought that's where we'd go while the Freedom Phalanx saved people in Kings Row.

The navbar has two identical "find information" objectives. Was there a problem with plurals?

Ah, that's right. The facility the Freedom Phalanx went to was in Atlas Park. One of the clues reminds me of that.

...and I'm getting the "whispers in your mind" clues in all kinds of a mixed up order.

It'd be nice if in addition to different names, the bosses had slightly different dialogue.

The final boss pulls some interesting bits, summoning visions of "Isaac" with no attack powers as distracting images. He goes down, and then a boss vision of Isaac appears, with the objectives "Kill Isaac, Strike the Final Blow".

So I kill the boss vision and then assume that last means to hunt down all the decoys.

Except since they have no powers they scatter to the four winds.

And some of them can fly.

And I have Super Speed, so no vertical mobility. Or range.

And it turns out taking out the decoys doesn't complete the mission.

I head back down and there Ishmael is, in front of the other elevator. Along with a gunner who looks like he's flying. What emote is that?

Pff. "Read the clues". Thanks, exit text. Did that already. But it'd be easier if they didn't go 7-1-4-2-3-5-6-8.

(That's about 5/7. I don't know why I remember that.)

As it turns out, all I did was flush him out so my contact could take him down. Chaos, rioting in the streets, dogs and cats sleeping together, et cetera.

I just get to lay the body to rest.

So, uh... where's the three? Forms of the final boss? City zones the arc takes place in? Average number of chained objectives per mission? Blind mice? What?

---

Storyline - **. History plaques this arc contradicts?

So here's the bright history of the Ishmael affair (as told in the plaques for the Intellectual badge). Ishmael experiments for months to try to work out a way to control the minds of the entire city. Eventually he's thwarted by a solo heroine called the Grimm Fairy, who submerges her will long enough to come under his control and track him down in Kings Row. After his arrest she realizes the horrific extent of his operation, and a task force of heroes liberates the prisoners from a Lost test facility in Atlas Park and finds his planning center in Galaxy City. Sister Psyche gives the city a good psychic loofah with the end result being a slight general inclination toward conflict in Perez Park. Ishmael is explicitly called out as captured, rather than killed, and the Grimm Fairy survives her confrontation with Ishmael at least long enough to talk to Positron. She's not called out as "former" either, which you might expect of someone who's dead.

Now, I could buy this arc trying to be the dark history that the city covered up. It could address this, or try to, in the souvenir, but it doesn't. The souvenir is basically my contact's obituary.

Which brings me to the big problem I had with this story, canon issues aside. I am basically the Grimm Fairy's sidekick. What I can do in the missions isn't much compared to what she can accomplish. The first mission is something she basically fobs off on me while she's off doing more important things. I then blunder into disabling Ishmael's psychic blocker so she can actually track him. She jets over to Galaxy City, stops the building from collapsing, and works out escape plans. I do the grunt work. And even when I'm free to operate on my own in the final mission, Ishmael considers himself beyond me, but she punks him off-screen.

Design - **. There are a lot of good ideas in this arc: an ancillary contact, the use of "ally captives" to call out plaintively in the second mission, the fourth mission taking place in the wrecked remains of the third, a mission with alternate paths to its completion (blow a way out vs. intercept the bombs), and a final boss who summons up images of himself to serve as decoys.

I hate to call somebody else out for something I've definitely been guilty of (and heck, may still be in violation) but not all of these ideas can actually be realized very well, or at all, in the Mission Architect. And ultimately, you write the arc with the editor you have, not the editor you wish you had, and that means some ideas can prove unworkable and need to be abandoned.

For all my contact talked up the ancillary contact -- Isaac's sister Abigail -- she was a preface to the first mission and then never seen again. Aside from the single hole in the floor, the fourth mission looks in even better shape than the third, mostly because of the different color palette. (I was expecting something abandoned, but admittedly I've got no idea if there are abandoned maps over anything that isn't Rikti caves.) I can't speak to how the "alternate objective" might work, as its apparent mechanism (rescue Grimm Fairy, click some glowies) wasn't acknowledged on the navbar and the mission completed in the original manner before I finished it. And the decoys certainly confused me -- into unnecessarily chasing them all down when the fight to complete the mission was actually one floor back and around some corners.

The saying goes "it's better to aim high and miss than aim low and hit". In terms of self-improvement this is certainly true. But what I see playing arcs is the result, not the process, and from my perspective a miss is still a miss wherever you aim.

Gameplay - ***. Taking out the decoys in the final mission (though ultimately unnecessary) was a return to the nightmarish days of chasing things as a melee class. Anybody remember that? Melee attacks had no range, so you had to queue up an attack and hope you could park yourself in the way of an enemy so the server would register it in melee range when it bumped against you? Those were the feelings I had when two dozen decoys all decided they'd rather be somewhere else.

The fourth mission was a bit of a pain too, what with trying to find spots against the brownish-orange woodwork to plant brownish-orange transparent bombs, and backtracking out of the tunnels to find some more hostages. For... some reason that was never really made clear.

Detail - **. There's a lot of detail. Sweet Christmas is there a lot of detail. But it's got more than two problems.

First, it's out of order. This is the easiest one to fix now that you can reorder objectives. This shows up in two places I could remember. The taunt from the Pariah about the bombs going off was scrolled off the clue window by two more objective clues and a mission complete clue about the manuscript he was carrying, and my clue window isn't exactly teeny. Knowing there are terrific explosions happening around you is kind of key to the plot progression, so I would have figured that for a mission complete clue. The more egregious one is Ishmael's piecemeal ranting, which as I documented is all broken up and out of its intended order. There are probably more examples than this but I didn't really notice them because of the second problem, namely:

There's just too dang many clues, and some of them are huge and irrelevant. Abigail's prelude to the first mission is one of them. Isaac's journal (big enough to be an end mission/start mission pair) is another, as it's an extended mix of his piecemeal rant in the clues of the last mission. The genuine duplicate clue in mission 2 is a smaller example, and the Grimm Fairy's piecemeal commentary on her escape plans in mission 4 tries to play tricks with chaining objectives to get itself some extra space.

And the third problem, also of the "aim too high and miss" variety, is that the detail often worked at cross-purposes with itself. Take the second mission, with the Lost hostage guards considering their fellow Lost to be lab specimens, "it"s -- things, instead of people. I realize there is no subculture so reviled by the mainstream that it cannot itself find an internal subculture to revile even stronger, but that dialogue just took the seeds of sympathy for the Lost planted in the first mission and scorched the earth. Then there's my contact, or rather, the green text that showed up whenever I talked to her. Here's a tip: the easiest way to get me to stop caring about something is to narrate at me that I do care, or that I should. The most hilarious example of this is when my contact pauses and the narration interjects that for various reasons I don't interrupt. Really, narration? I've sat back and let Operative Vargas natter on at me about proactively synergizing my core competencies, but all of a sudden you feel compelled to justify my lack of interruption? I realize that the arc expects me to care about my contact by the end of it, just in time for her to bite it, but if you can't just sell that with her dialogue on its own, then narrating at me that I do care after all is just going to have the opposite effect.

Overall - **. This arc is very ambitious, but in its attempts to overstep the bounds of the Mission Architect it trips and falls, and in its attempts to be cinematic it often makes me feel like more of an audience than a superhero.

Aside from reordering the clues and paring back on some of the less workable mechanics, there aren't many hard and fast fixes. The reality is that Ishmael almost mind-controlled the entirety of Paragon City and the Grimm Fairy soloed him. A player hero who's a direct participant in that kind of story is going to wear the Second Banana hat, barring impressive continuity gymnastics. One possible out is not to make the arc about that story, but about the Grimm Fairy, the player meeting her on patrol in Kings Row, maybe helping her pull free of Ishmael's control, and then participating in the cleanup, with the revelation of the true nature of the Lost saved for the end, after which the Grimm Fairy gives up her mask and the player hero would rather not be immortalized as an accessory to what went on.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a high-teens Peacebringer, old Heroic difficulty with bosses on.

---

Investigating the dark history of Spanky Rabinowitz. Yeah, this is something I've been wishing the canon would do for a while. Time to... uh... investigate ancient city records.

FOR JUSTICE!

And apparently, for sticking it to the Circle of Thorns.

Why they're here I don't know. I find some old records but the clue says they're unremarkable, and now there's a boss I have to defeat.

I guess because having the CoT poking around city records is a pretty bad idea.

The boss is called "Burning Sulphur', which is rather odd as a name for a stock CoT boss -- I was expecting some kind of custom villain. Using a generic CoT-style name like the ones you get from paper missions for CoT bosses isn't a bad idea.

Anyway, now I know what old-timey radio programs Spanky used to listen to. Uh... go me?

---

Now it's time to meet a random Family boss and hope he knows something useful about Spanky?

Because... decades later, somebody might know that?

I work my way through the cargo ship, seeing a lot of spawns of one lieutenant. I wonder why the Frosts specifically have custom enemies. (AR/SS minion, DB/SR and SS/MA lieuts) I mean, Sebastian Frost heads up the Family, and they certainly exist over a decent level range.

Villainside, anyway. You might be able to make a custom group renaming Marcones to Frosts or whatever.

Anyway, after I laser the boss enough he says that... Spanky used to buy off the Frosts to keep civil.

Not exactly earthshaking, that.

---

And the Circle broke in and stole a map to Dark Astoria. Okay. That's a thing they do, certainly.

There's a Ruin Mage in here I need to drop and a... Soul Seductress? Different from the Succubi the CoT usually call up, I suppose? Some other party interested in Spanky's soul.

You know, I thought that thing would have shuffled off to Buffalo by now.

Anyway, two guys down, with only the map left to find.

...and only the Behemoth portal room to find it in.

Mommy.

Oh lord it's RIGHT NEXT TO ONE.

Die. Die. Die. Die. Chug lucks. Die. Die. Chug more lucks. Die.

FINALLY click the glowie.

So, reading over the clues, Spanky Rabinowitz was... an ancient soul of immense power.

And he decided mayor was a step up?

---

Going to Moth Cemetary to find it overrun by...

Minions: claws/kin, fire blast/fire manip, mind control/fire control

Lieutenants: elec blast (with Aim)/psy blast, dark blast/dark armor?

Not a very reasonable mix for someone who isn't even in SOs yet.

The "boss" here is the elec blast lieutenant. Not exactly complaining, even had a nice animation to help find it, but I beat two bosses in the last map and one lieutenant in this one?

---

Last attempt to save the departed mayor's soul...

Oh for the love of little green apples, it's the Ruladak cave.

This works well for the Rularuu because all of them GLOW. It's just a pain to navigate otherwise.

Also stumbling into controller minions is pretty much the opposite of fun.

I try and rescue the ally for some help but they're vulnerable to control sets too.

Oh! Hey, it's Yamanari, or whatever that name was.

But getting ambushed by controllers over and over again means I die over and over again.

The boss is a fire blast/fire armor elite boss with Aim. ...yeah, pulling the Shivan out for this one.

So that's Spanky's grand bargain. Didn't want to sell his soul, so the demons gave him a reason -- the fog in Dark Astoria.

---

Storyline - **. The end revelation is kind of a let down. We come all this way, fight that monster of an end boss, and... in the end all we can do is hear the truth. There's nothing we can actually do for Spanky. The first two missions are pretty much pointless distractions that don't really tell us anything notable about the guy -- things only start with the theft of the map in mission 3, and I don't know what I did in mission 4 that helped my contact read the map. Probably nothing.

I could say a few things about Spanky and Dark Astoria, but frankly the continuity is a bit snarled. It's possible to untangle it by making some assumptions, but that's neither here nor there. One part of it that I thought would be appropriate to address was the fate of the Moiraine, a ship that left port without being christened by Spanky, as was the style at the time. It was swallowed up by fog and never seen again until it showed up all green, translucent, and spewing ghost sailors.

Design - **. The new enemy groups seem a bit... unnecessary. The Frost family already exists. It's just the Family. And whatever new group you designed to be the custodians of Spanky's soul... why not just the Banished Pantheon? They're based out of Dark Astoria already.

Also, enemies with two melee sets or two ranged sets are bad enough, but two control sets? On a minion? Ow. And the claw minion had access to Transference, which is just a kick in the blue bar.

The missions really need a narrower level range. Just to establish the power level of a character who's supposed to confront everything. I played the entire arc except the last mission at my natural level, which I think was a bit out of whack.

Gameplay - *. Managing the control minions was a bit of a challenge even when I could see them. The last mission with its literal blind curves was a nightmare. The only way to see many of the customs was through the targeting recticle.

The adventure I had trying to click a glowie right in front of a Behemoth portal wasn't exactly pleasant either.

Detail - ****. Even though the story was a bit of a letdown, the detail throughout was solid and believable. I wasn't confused or misled by anything.

Overall - **. The anticlimax ending, overpowering enemy sets, seemingly unnecessary customs, and overly broad level range all drag this one down.

Tonight is for random arcs, but I'll pick things up starting tomorrow.

First off the randomizer: Red Scare (77395). Previously reviewed as ***.
Second off: Spanks for the Memories (21144). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a low-40s ice/axe tanker, +0 x2 with bosses on (but no AVs).

---

Hmm. No description on my contact. Probably a relic of when you couldn't have them. One would be nice, though.

Anyway, off to grab artifacts that can manipulate fate and bring them to the Midnighter Club. I'm sure they won't be misused in any way.

The first mission is grabbing a spindle from an Arachnos base. The popup suggests that the base has no idea what it actually possesses, and this is certainly true as far as I can tell.

Then again, I can't tell very much, as the base is packed full of silent Arachnos with the glowie in the middle rather than the end (this map is probably one of the many where glowies are mislocated). A patrol or a base commander wouldn't be unwelcome.

---

Mission two, find-and-replace Council for Arachnos on mission one. Silent base, single glowie.

My contact remarks that it's odd no reinforcements showed up. Yes, it is, thanks for pointing that out.

---

Will there actually be something in this Circle base other than a bunch of silent CoT and a single glowie? ...I'm not getting my hopes up.

A bunch of silent green CoT. This is less fun than it might be because the axe tosses them all over the place.

You might want to take another look at the mission pacing setting, since it actually works right now.

Yep. Single glowie, not even any interaction time, and this one's at the middle of the map too. No bosses, no chattiness, nada.

---

Okay, so something's gone wrong and there's a riot in progress. Let's go see.

Okay, it looks like there's an entire cult of heirs to the fates who want their toys back. I find the boss right near the start of the level (you can't really help it with outdoor maps sometimes), and after she goes down that's the mission over.

Looks like there's a grav/kin minion, an arch/emp minion, and a psy/psy minion, a blade/shield lieutenant, and a mace/fire armor boss. Not a bad mix, but the descriptions are rather generic. Why do they have these powers?

Also, way to notice when disparate villain groups actually had the stuff you complained about missing.

---

And... they had legitimate complaints and we're doing what they asked. I'm sure this won't come back to bite me.

Oh look, a bunch of 5th Column. Who are here for... a reason.

Anyway, with inscribing the wards, it might be nice if the pillars could do the fade in from transparency.

And I lay the artifacts to rest... among piles of bones. Sure, why not.

In lieu of an actual last boss, I just aggro the entire end room onto myself.

Not even any clues for what's going on here? Or why the 5th Column are here instead of the Council or a mix of the groups I've been fighting so far?

Oh. Apparently, according to my contact, they've come from Cimerora? Somehow?

---

Storyline - ***. I have to admit, this is possibly the first "gather the artifacts"-themed mission I've seen played completely straight. And the random rioting people were actually airing a legitimate grievance!

But the Moirae and the 5th Column were both completely out of nowhere. A guest appearance by the Moirae or some files in the Council base would have helped set them up.

Design - **. It doesn't sit well with me to have a whole mission with nothing going on but a glowie in the back. I realize my contact says some things about how it's odd the bases are so quiet, but that just brings it to my attention, raising the expectation that something's up that will be explained later on.

When it isn't, that's a double letdown. Once for no explanation, and once retroactively for the empty mission..

Gameplay - ***. One boss fight, and that in the fourth mission. Heck, the first three missions are completely stealthable and the only fighting in the last mission is because of the defeat all condition. I guess if that's what you were going for it's alright, but I honestly expect a little more opposition when I'm trying to do something that will reset the nature of destiny.

Detail - **. There's nothing there but the minimum clues. Nobody outside the fourth mission actually talks. About anything. Patrols and destructibles can be used to add text without adding bosses, if for some reason you don't want to. (or you could foreshadow some of the Moirae by putting them in as captives)

Overall - **. An arc that was probably alright when the Architect first came out, but the story's a bit disjointed and the missions are painfully simple. Adding foreshadowing to the first three missions would help fix both problems, and I wouldn't say no to an end boss, even if it was just a stock one.

Tonight's arc: The Skein of Fate (22740). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.

Also, nobody's arc is going to come up until Thursday, so tomorrow and Wednesday will be random runs unless somebody wants to jump in line.

That animation is the old one that played when Penelope Yin destroyed the PsychoChronoMetron.

I'm not sure when she stopped playing it, or why Positron's got it now instead of being a good kitty.

@GlaziusF

Running this on my level 50 spine/regen scrapper, +0 x2 with bosses on.

---

Hey, it's Legally Distinct From Dr. Fate!

Actually I shouldn't say anything there, blue and gold is a pretty stylin' combo. Anyway, my job is to go find a scepter and hand it over to be destroyed. Sounds simple enough.

I find an ill/psy EB waiting to help me. He's not guarded and I can't exactly turn him down, but on the meager followers I've seen so far he's just a bit of overkill.

Though on the Cyclops which shows up after I free Doc Delilah he's a bit of a help. The Cyclops has his stock description, which seems pretty off, considering how he's introduced.

Got a mixup in the debriefing - "specter" for "scepter".

---

Hmm. Alright, something's gone wrong and now I have to pull my contact's component bits back together.

Aw geez. Red Atlas. Ah well, it can't be too bad since I'm looking for a person rather than a glowie.

The place is full of storm elementals, and the navbar informs me I have to ask some kind of trickster spirit for directions, which seems odd as I haven't been told anything about him by my contact.

For some reason defeating the boss the trickster points me to reveals what I was looking for. Not that I'm complaining that I can stop running all over Red Atlas, but it's rather arbitrary.

---

Man, these demons did a number on my contact. They also stripped him of the artifact that's the source of his powers, and took it to Oranbega.

I guess unlocking the boss by clicking a glowie is alright, but my contact didn't tell me anything about this tome of judgment.

The boss is a minotaur with a stock description. I get a clue for beating him, but I get nothing for opening the chest with the Eye of Horus.

---

And now it's the finale. Seems a bit abrupt, but at least I'll get some help near the end.

Oh. The graveyard. I guess that's an alright temple, but I was expecting something with a few more walls.

Seems to be completely empty. I guess I fight the guardians alone.

The stone elemental was a bit of a challenge -- if you're using Earth Assault for him you should be aware that its damage scales are way out of whack with, say, Stone Melee.

The fire elemental might be able to do without Fiery Embrace, as it seriously boosts his damage, and because of their powersets both the air and "water" elementals both drop a ton of slow on a hero.

But with them all down, I... make a couple laps around the graveyard searching for what turns out to be a tiny transparent glowie that blends in with the rock. Not much fun, that.

Fortunately, afterward it's pretty easy to find what needs to be done as the hostage guards are pretty obvious and I got perhaps a bit lucky to get Pathos close by.

Weirdly enough since I don't have AVs on he's actually the easiest of the five things I have to fight. Sure, psy assault is a bit hard to handle, but that's the extent of his repertoire.

And that's it. Universe saved.

---

Storyline - ****. Pretty standard story here, sensible progression. But I'd have liked to see more than one coincidental mission against the main enemy group before they messed everything up, learn something about them and perhaps their master before we just had to go all-out stopping them from getting the Golden Scepter and doing...

What were they planning, anyway? And how would the Scepter help?

Design - ***. The customs look generally fitting, but it's a bit easy to confuse the flame-lobbers with the necromancers, since they're all about the same size and overall color. Pathos also seemed to be the smallest boss in the end mission -- I realize he's not supposed to be a physical powerhouse, but it doesn't feel right for the end boss to be less intimidating than his entourage.

Most of this is for the second and third missions, though, which toss objectives up on the navbar without much plot justification for why they're there.

Gameplay - ***. The custom bosses, especially Earth and Fire elementals, can be a bit unreasonable. But this is mostly for the other parts of the empty last mission, trying to find two glowies on an outdoor map, the second one transparent. (I was expecting a destructible instead of the first glowie, to be honest.)

Detail - ***. You used a lot of stock enemies in new or interesting ways, but seeing a stock Cyclops/Minotaur description when I was expecting a little lore about a servant of Pathos or the ancient bounds champion was a bit of a disappointment.

Overall - ***. Work a bit on retuning or selecting new sets for the elementals - it was a good setpiece but the fights were a bit unreasonable at times. Try picking more visible objectives for the clicks in the final mission as well - they can be anywhere, and even though the outdoor map is on the small side, it's still a lot of ground to cover.

Do a little more to distinguish minions from lieutenants. There is the flame aura, but it's not quite enough to rely on. And the enemy group as a whole could use a little more definition, both in establishing before they start messing with my contact and the description of the minotaur and cyclops.

Unfortunately I just crashed out last night, so there'll just be this one arc for the weekend.

The Golden Scepter (9852). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

Tonight's arc: A Taste For Evil (349034). Verdict - ****. Review in MA Forums Thread.

As an aside, this is the end of my queue, as I try to put a week in between reviews for any one author. So it'll be on to random CoHMR stuff this weekend unless somebody wants to toss their arc in the ring.

Review done as part of the CoHMR Aggregator Project.

@GlaziusF

Playing this one on a low-20s ice/fire dominator. Old Villainous difficulty (+0, x1) with bosses turned on.

---

Ah, the journey to R&D. Wouldn't be a proper Troubleshooting excursion without one.

I rescue Dr. Aeon from a burning building and head up to where Snakes are trying to defend their eggs. Apparently they've got a Property of Aeon Corp sticker on them, as the system text informs me when I pound on one.

Upstairs is a fridge, with an interesting use of the betrayal mechanic to give Dr. Aeon a line when I pick up the NutriPaste.

Mmm. Chicken.

I guess since the Snakes are just pests in Arachnos' eyes Brass is fine with Aeon messing with them.

---

The bug text for mission 2 is pretty funny, but I guess if, like, the Luddites got their hands on a report about NutriPaste they'd be even more of an annoying nuisance.

Oh hell. Vahzilok have invaded Aeon University. They are doctors, in their own way, so I can see why they might be interested.

Well. Apparently this stuff can induce mutations and super-powers. Is Aeon using recycled water from the Mercy treatment plant?

---

Ah, guard duty. Can't wait to fill out those forms.

Good news: the forms are on fire. Bad news: SO IS EVERYTHING ELSE.

The Luddites have torched the place. Oh boy.

There are three bosses here throwin' crates. I wouldn't put it past that being a default animation for Luddites, but I don't think they'll show up for one villain, so they must be placed.

The raid leader after three bosses is a bit of a yawner, and the end mission clue includes a description of what the Luddites must be doing elsewhere.

You know what else could convey that information? A PAMPHLET. Seriously, the dudes hand out the dang things all the time on the streets, it would make perfect sense to get a Luddite call to action brochure off the raid leader.

Wait, what? Why am I on the hook for this? It wasn't even my shift yet!

---

Hydroponics? Growing things? Why am I expecting DE?

The front room is full of body bags. That's not good.

Ah, defendables. They call ambushes, you know. And for some reason the ambushes seem rather large. Like, five dudes large.

Well, I've got AoE and some lucks to burn, so that's not too bad.

The leader rants about starving everybody in the Rogue Isles, which I guess is a corollary of the Orange Pipes of Doom going down and leaving everybody powerless.

---

I like how Brass hasn't forgotten about the taste-test.

Also, damn. Totally alone at a factory? Well, I guess we'll be seeing lots of battles between security and Luddites, then.

Well, Goldbrickers and Luddites, anyways. I don't hear anything coming from the battles, so I have no idea why the Brickers are there. Looting? Freelancing?

There are two things about this map and the MA that make it a giant slog. First, it likes spawning objectives in obscure locations like on catwalks near the height ceiling, or behind the walls of the power substation.

Second, destructibles don't actually become targetable until their surrounding enemies are aggroed. This is generally not an issue, except that the last destructible spawned its associated Luddite guard two floors up and in a structure enclosed on four sides.

To give you an idea of how obscure these locations can be, I didn't notice the ambush text for destroying the last explosive and tabbed out to write this. Five minutes later I tabbed back in and the ambush had only just managed to get a line of sight on me to start shooting.

Yeah. This map isn't fun when you have to find one thing, let alone when you have to find seven things.

So apparently I got the placebo. I get to not grow bug arms, which is a pity as I need to hold more things. But if it's all the same to Dr. Aeon I think I'll go fishing for my supper. There's good eating on a Coralax.

---

Storyline - ****. Great work actually using the Luddites, who make like one cameo in Themari's arc and that's about it. But the problem is that the last three missions are basically identical - "stop the Luddites from destroying technology". While this is what they're famous for, and while Marshall Brass is more into suppression than investigation, it would be nice to know what set them off down the path of destroying NutriPaste. The Vahz leaked the test results? Luddites were used as test subjects? A high-ranking Brother got really irked that they dropped his favorite flavor (snozzberries 'n' cream) from this re-release?

Design - ****. It didn't really help that mission 3 involved defeating four Luddite bosses on a small map. Compared to that, defeating three Luddite bosses on a big map just doesn't feel as important.

Gameplay - ***. The last map was just frustrating trying to find everything, and it didn't help that the guard on the destructible was just one Luddite minion. The final destructible was probably just the perfect storm of objective and guard placement, but it bugged the hell out of me trying to figure out what to do. Destructibles need more guards to give a greater chance of one actually being in aggro range when you get near it, and if you can find a map that works for the last mission, other than that Cap substation, please use it. Even one of the outdoor factory maps might work.

Also if you can scale back the number of defendables in the fourth map that'd be swell, as they were calling what seemed like out-sized ambushes.

Detail - ****. Pretty solid, with the interesting backing story of my personal trial of NutriPaste(tm) brand food substitute, though the generic bios on the Luddites didn't help with the feelings of saminess over the last three missions.

Overall - ****. Better than the first arc in this series, but then I honestly had different expectations given what your first Arachnos VEAT mission does for you. Needs a little work down the stretch to end uniquely and maybe not be quite as frustrating in the last mission through larger objective guards/a different map.

If you're looking for stuff to do, LJ, Backwards Day and Malta: Impossible are out there, in addition to all the other arcs. Though they're both higher-level so any pistols character you might have made won't be much good at them.

Unless you only do one per author, in which case, please ignore.

@GlaziusF

Playing this on a level 15 broadsword/shield scrapper, old Heroic difficulty but with bosses on.

---

Well. This is a simple setup. Random costumed kooks robbin' a bank.

Refreshing, in its own way.

Looks like I'm fighting a bunch of different-colored versions of the stock jester costume. Red and black swords and archers, green lieutenants. All of them have plural names despite presumably being a single example of the enemy rank in question.

I mean, unless they're all two midgets in a clown suit. Weirder things have happened.

Their boss is Japes, presumably different from the Japers, though in a similar costume as another minion. Elite boss. With no warning. Not really good for sub-20 characters, many of whom will never have fought one before, and then only at the end of a storyarc.

I get a Mission Completed clue which should really be the contact's debriefing.

---

And now a jewelry store robbery by the same clown. ...literally.

He runs. At like 75 percent health. With his armor and the tiny distance between him and the door I don't have much prayer of catching him.

---

And the next mission is the tiny speakeasy, with Japes spawning about 5 inches away from the front door.

I throw a few lives at him and he goes down quickly enough.

Wow. Not even a souvenir?

---

Storyline - **. There isn't one. This arc doesn't really go anywhere. In an arc investigating a new villain group I'd expect the progression to be "stop something they're doing" -> "learn about them and find the boss" -> "fight the boss". This is just three boss fights devoid of much in the way of context or progression.

Design - *. Ordinarily I'd expect to get the chance to come to grips with a new villain group. But I don't think I took down even two dozen of Japes' minions. The maps are so tiny. And Japes runs off in the second mission before the fight's even gotten underway, and jumps you right at the entrance of the third. This arc is, well, laughably short. There's no time or space to get a sense of anything.

Gameplay - **. The upside of the missions being so short is that it's easy to get back after the completely unannounced elite boss carves any given pre-SO character up. Missions have warnings about elite bosses for a reason. They also have warnings about bosses escaping -- Japes ran off for whatever reason in the first mission but it was just an AI thing. I didn't know he was actually serious about bolting in the second mission until the door opened, and by then it was too late to do anything. If I could have done anything.

Detail - *. You know what's the most off about Japes? He's serious. Not Why So Serious. Serious. He doesn't make any jokes. The cop tries to make it sound like he's pulling pranks, but there's nothing to distinguish them from the average villain group activity. Japes himself doesn't try puns, jokes, or wordplay -- he doesn't even laugh very much!

Overall - *. This reminds me of the old days of Mission Architect, but in a bad way. It feels like an experimental first try. It's not good for the plot, which is basically xeroxed between missions. It's not good for the fighting, since there are hardly any mooks in the three missions. It's not good for the boss challenge because it's pitched at pre-SO characters. And it's not good for the comedy because there isn't any.

Tonight's arc: Enter Japes (96001). Verdict - *. Review lower in this thread.

Tonight's arc: To Dream of Nothing (374644). Verdict - ***. Review in MA Forums Thread.