GlaziusF

@GlaziusF

Playing this one on an archery/energy blaster in the high 30s. All bosses no AVs 1 hero at +1.

Also this arc description seems to think it features Praetorian Clockwork. While this is probably just database funkiness combined with arc age, for one shining instant I thought it were true.

---

So I wonder how this is going to work. Footsteps Initiative or something a little more mentory?

Huh. Interesting. So mission 1 is to make her ego into a pincushion. I can work with this.

She shows up right at the front of the mission, though. Is that intended? Seems a bit excessive to mow down all the Longbow too.

Huh. She seems to be back for a rematch after I spring the hostage. Interesting.

But this time she's at the tail end of the mission.

Whether you mixed that up or the map did, it's up to you to fix.

Also, 3K Kelvin wasn't much help. Or any help. I guess I was just supposed to lead him around all depowered?

---

Anyway, onto the next exercise. Just a routine cleanup of some Circle of Thorns.

...I wonder.

The navbar says "Ruin Mage". I'm guessing this is autotext based on his name; it should be replaced.

Also this is a reasonably-sized map for a defeat all and it helps having a proton pack hero to fight the ghosts.

But Circle aren't good for defeat alls at this level. Sticking around for the ruin mage's earthquake to go away isn't so bad, but the ghosts like to go invisible and run somewhere when the fight goes against them.

The only dialogue in this cave is the Ruin Mage wondering why my companion found him. That's it. No clue to what they're up to here or nothin'. Just dudes in a cave.

---

Hmm. A rematch. I guess Babs let on, huh? Okay, let's see what this is about.

It's about fighting somebody in the first room of a warehouse map, it would seem. When she goes down and I drop her escort on the catwalk, mission over.

I head back to investigate, but all that's there is a named Longbow Officer with no special dialogue.

I have to say, I was kind of expecting like some kind of sinister twist thing here what with the Circle.

---

And now... Wretch has invaded Paragon City and it's time to step up.

So, uh... training mission, routine Circle patrol, training mission rematch, ARACHNOS TOP BRASS.

Seems like a wee bit of a speed bump there.

Electric is running her aura, which takes out her guards by the time I zone in. Happens with all hostage-types with damage auras.

And Babs is coming along as a witness. ...is he running Assault? Someone's running Assault for +15% damage and it sure isn't me.

Fortunately I packed some lucks so when I get to the boss room I can tank Wretch long enough for my blaster buddy to zot him down.

---

Storyline - ***. In the early, heady days of MA it probably was possible to go from 15 to 50 in the time it'd take to play this arc. But I default to assuming that missions happen one right after the other, and like I said in the commentary, it goes training mission - normal patrol - training rematch - END BOSS SWEET CHRISTMAS. Now, I might have been misremembering or misinterpreting but it seemed like this was just a young hero starting out who needed some ego knocked out. The kind of progression I did see might work with a veteran hero who'd just lost confidence for whatever reason and Babs wanted her back on the front lines. I expected some kind of sinister undercurrent when she jumped up in power, because that sort of thing just doesn't happen in so short a time.

Design - **. Some pretty fundamental problems with the order stuff appears in in the warehouse missions. The stuff that's supposed to be at the end is at the beginning and vice-versa. It short-circuits mission 3 and makes mission 1 operate counter to how you'd think it ought to, with the trainee hero blocking your way to 3K and then coming back just in time to meet you again. The custom hero is pretty nice, though if you can believably take out her lightning aura you might want to do that just so she actually gets rescued in mission 4 instead of sparking her guards into oblivion.

Gameplay - ****. Aside from hunting down wayward spectrals, not a bad run overall.

Detail - ***. I got one clue, from the first time I defeated the trainee hero. Everything else was completely blank, and there really wasn't a lot of talking in the missions - idle Longbow/Arachnos chatter in 1, 3, and 4, or any talk at all in mission 2. Didn't help much to define the story.

Overall - ***. Part of this arc's problem is that it tries to do something I don't think MA supports very well - montage several moments over a stretch of (likely) months into a coherent story. But all the same, the missions could stand to be fleshed out and inspected for bugs, as the MA changes under us all.

Further adventures in CoHMR randomness!

I was going to have a look at Statesman and the Atomic Soldier (8993) but it seems to have gone missing.
Then the randomizer coughed up Chains of Blood (4829), which is averaged at 5 stars but which might be closer to 4 on, but I played it a while back and Venture likes his updates, so.
And lastly came The Brawler and the Bawler (1053). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

@GlaziusF

Done as part of the CoHMR Aggregator Project.

Running this on my spine/regen level 50 solo monster, all bosses no AVs 2 heroes at +0.

---

Okay, mysterious portal, distress beacon, let's go investigate. Why not?

Interesting custom group. Kind of odd that you've got minions in full armor next to minions in their civvies with a few pads on.

Hmm.

Lieutenants and Gunners seem to be worth some XP, but the Commander, Field Marshal, Crowd Control Unit, and Pyro Unit don't seem to be worth any at all.

So, which anagram do you want do go with here? A unit description says "Elides Norm", but the units are talking about "Mesisen".

The clues are a bit divided on this, too.

Interesting way of getting out, and thank you for not spawning vocal patrols once the hostages are gone.

So, a brutal earth with only a few survivors. Portal Corp likes evacing them to mainline Earth in these kinds of situations.

---

But apparently I'm getting into freedom fighting. Well, alright. Even if it is a T.R.A.P.

So, setting bombs in a factory. Dear.

Oh, it's inside. That's a bit of a help.

The bombs are placed before I even catch sight of the boss. Were they all set to "middle"? Four of them seem to have been set up in the same room, but that's probably just weird luck.

No XP for dropping the foreman, either. And you may be interested to know that you can use $himher in dialogue to put in the appropriate pronoun.

I get a rather stilted summary of what I've just done as a mission exit clue. I can't say I like that style very much, as I generally know what I've just done, even several days after I've just done it.

...the mission exit popup says "After you rescued The Answer himself and some T.R.A.P soldiers ran off down a nearby alley to escape the Rapture soldiers rapidly arriving to the rebel's hideout."

That doesn't a) make sense or b) relate to anything I actually did in the mission.

---

Ah. I have a feeling it's this next one, then. I'm going... somewhere... to meet up with the Answer.

Awfully quiet in here. It's cliche. A bit TOO cliche. Ah well, down the rabbit hole.

And at the end of it all is a Toxic Tarantula with some Municipality thugs around him. To the rescue! (I like the explanation, by the by.)

Ah, now everyone's in Arachnos gear. There are Rebels and... uh... Flying Columns? (Crab Spiders. Generally not known for their flying.)

And boy, they're handing the Municipality its collective rear end in a sling! (Maybe you should tip the fights a little more if they're supposed to be losing?)

Unfortunately it means the victors clog the tunnels and The Answer can't get back out again, but it's not a required escort so it's just irksome rather than teeth-grittingly frustrating..

The raid commander seems to be just a renamed Commander, so no XP for him either.

...wait, dude thinks soldiers followed me to the hideout? The lock was forced when I got here.

---

Anyway, time to assassinate a political leader. But he's oppressive, so it's okay. Right?

Anyhow, he's got some squads I need to take out first, which are led by, apparently, Commanders, who are. again, worth no XP.

Huh. I reach the rooftop with 2 commanders to go, but I can't find them anywhere, so I go back to search inside.

Okay, I find one on an overhang. It would help if they SAID something or had a pose other than "one guy on a cardboard box".

TWO! On exactly the same overhang in exactly the same kind of room! (the corridor-y one with the large balcony on one long wall, if it matters)

If they said something I'd have spotted them much quicker.

So I hope the Architect has decided to feel climactic and head back for the roof, even though it's a gamble whether anything will spawn here.

And whaddaya know! He does!

Also the royal guard have the old version of the name.

As does the clue I get on dropping him, which mentions something he said during his speech. ...that I didn't actually hear in his boss dialogue.

I do get some invasion plans, though. Well, this just got personal.

---

So the briefing for next mission mentions Mesisen. Again. Man, you really need to check this for consistency, unless it's just supposed to be random.

Huh. Actually the "big boss" is kinda chilling in a corridor well before the end room on this tech map. Ah well, time to take him out.

The clue he drops on his death just says "uble". ...that's the title. No text.

Uh, what?

So maybe he's in the boss room NOW. ...nope.

Going back down a floor, then.

Back down TWO floors.... he's in the first room?

This time the clue I get (before the one that just said "uble") is telling me he was a body double of some sort.

And NOW I check the boss room... and there's Nemesis fist-pounding.

Now, I'll be honest here - I read someone else's review of the arc quite accidentally, so I knew this was coming. But... well, I guess you get it from running up to him and trying to decipher the boss dialogue while he's trying to clobber you.

I generally was a bit too busy trying not to die from a whole bunch of build ups on the "royal guard".

And when I return to the real world, I get a note from Nemesis telling me that I have been trolled, I have lost, and to have a nice day.

(Also the ending clues for the mission seem to be in the first person for some weird reason.)

There's... not even a souvenir to be had? Dang.

---

Storyline - *. You know what I hate? I get to the end of a storyline that turns out exactly the way the author wants it to every time and somebody calls my character a chump for getting there. At least in the general sense, I want to see how the story ends, but I don't want to feel like a chump. These are generally not very contradictory desires.

But here's round 2. Nemesis maintained an entire city, or at least several prominent buildings, in order to distract a single hero for a couple of hours? That seems like vastly off-kilter risk vs. reward.

Here are two things I wouldn't mind as much. Both of them involve the people I save being real but also a Nemesis plot to some degree:

1) The whole thing was a plot of some other dimension's Nemesis. Maybe even THAT dimension's Nemesis and he hadn't got 'round to really good clones yet. Nemesis provided TRAP with their interdimensional beacon, and at the end he thanks me for putting him one up on his competition.

2) This was actually a partial plot by this dimension's Nemesis, but after it was proving unworkable he decided to have a hero come in and break it up. If the hero fails, hey, defeated hero. Bonus!

Design - **. The royal guards were a bit unreasonable. A giant wave of Build Up going off is no way to start a boss fight. The other troopers were actually mostly reasonable, except for the part where only two out of the six gave any XP at all. And those Commanders were busting out Full Auto, so it's not like they were pushovers. But they were missing some standard power from one of their sets, and were therefore worthless in terms of XP. Have a look at that, maybe switching the Pyros over to Fire Blast and calling them Firebat-style hand flamers.

Gameplay - ***. Big problems were backtracking over Marchand's Office to find all the backup squads (a little dialogue on them would fix that) and backtracking through the final lab to fight the second form of the end boss (I think he's front, the bloody-faced one is middle, and the big boss is back; the first two should be reversed.)

Detail - **. Decide what terrible fake name you want to use for this guy, and use it all the way through - in the clues, in the enemy descriptions, in the dialogue. It just swung back and forth with no rhyme or reason. There's also a popup exit thing out of place, and a terribly mangled clue in the final mission.

Overall - **. Needs enemies that aren't worth NOTHING! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!, a consistent nomenclature for the guy in charge across the board, and an ending where it doesn't turn out I just got interdimensonally trolled.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a low 40s ice/axe tank, all bosses no AVs two heroes at +0.

---

Oh. Timed mission. Sense of urgency. Nicely done.

It'd be nice if the briefing explained this time limit and the reason for it.

Now, uh, why am I angry, exactly? Innocent until proven guilty or they collide with my fist, right? I mean, there are all sorts of ways for a virus to get out of a lab. Most of them are accidental.

Anyway, I find a bodybag on the first level, which apparently I can tell is a casualty of the Dante virus right away. It takes me a long time to read the nametag, though.

I head up to the third floor and find a whole lot of battles with the same exact dialogue for each one, and... nothing.

Though down on the second floor I find the computer I was looking for... and get jumped by archmages.

Since I don't have to fight them it's alright, but archmages are really closer to elite bosses than bosses in challenge. I believe they would have been elite bosses had elite bosses existed at the time.

---

Oh boy, I WILL be fighting one. I can hardly contain my enthusiasm.

Also can I get some multiple paragraphs all up ins? Makes individual ideas easier to figure out.

Um. So to find this guy I should look in... Oranbega? That's all I get?

Oranbega is an entire lost city. That's like telling me he's somewhere in Paragon City!

Oh, this is the map called "Oranbega". It's actually pretty reasonable as far as Circle maps go, but it's basically made entirely of corridors.

Bah bah bah MULTIPLE ARCHMAGES AS ESCORTS?

At least Varal's a normal boss.

Oh wait. NO HE'S NOT. And there's an Agony Archmage in the escort! Go go Absorb Pain!

...where are all these Behemoth Overlords coming from? There's like eight of them. Is this two ambushes that both got severely lost?

Looking at the NPC dialogue, it would seem so!

And there's one more coming, too.

Through intervention at the hand of some god, I manage to pull just the Agony mage off when I get back from the hospital, along with two ambushes of behemoths.

And then I defeat the Inquisitor... and find out I actually have to take out his entire spawn of three arch-mages.

Let me be very clear here: archmages have about 80% resist to all damage. Natively. Coupled with the buffing powers, ONE archmage is a giant meatwall of a nightmare.

Three, fought together, is NINE TIMES THE NIGHTMARE.

I get two clues on completion which a) could probably just be the one mission complete clue, as the boss clue just describes the mission complete one anyway, and b) could stand to be the archmage's actual words.

Apparently the big piece of vital information he has for me is that... the Dante virus preferentially targets people with magical
potential. Thanks, pal. I'm sure MAGI wasn't going to work that one out on their own. Eesh.

---

...oh, Baron Zoria. Poor, misunderstood Baron Zoria.

"With this thorn, I gain the power of an ancient civilization!" shouted Zoria.

The acolyte said, "No, Zoria. You are the ancient civilization."

And Zoria was a crystal.

He shows up in the end of the "Smoke and Mirrors" Ouro TF titled Baron Zoria but with Akarist's description, and his model is the Akarist model from the Library of Souls arc.

But Baron Zoria is part of the library of souls. There's a circle mage jacking his body, as it is with all the other mortal members of the Circle of Thorns. (We don't know who it is. It's probably not Akarist, though,) Publicly, yes, the Circle of Thorns is a revivalist cult led by Zoria, but given that I'm level 40 for this arc the truth should be out there, especially for Cadao Kestrel.

Anyway, I'm going to stock up on Shivans as I have no idea what the difficulty will accidentally be.

Ah, the Leviathan cave map. Notable in that it has so many special TF spawns that half of it is completely empty. Except for the spaces to put glowies, anyway.

Also since I get something to start the mission that strikes me as a nice place for a begin mission clue.

...uh, okay. So this mission is coded "ramp up" which means that it starts with giant swarms of minions.

Except they're giant swarms of lieutenants, since the enemy group doesn't have any minions.

And a sizable majority of them start battle by popping AIM AND INFERNO.

Oh, and there's Blackstar and Dreadful Wail in there too. Glorious.

A boss who is... Fire Control/Willpower? Seems like it. A self-rez with a giant damage period afterward.

...so there's this attackable minion who charges right into melee when half the lieutenants drop damage fields and the other half drop tier 9s and all of them have AIm or Build Up.

And I actually have to get him out.

Alive.

Yeah, no. Before I even realized where he WAS his body was already sliding down the hill.

I don't think I'll be replaying this to see what happens if by some miracle of chance and strategy I can actually get him out alive.

---

Storyline - ***. So as far as I can figure the plot goes something like this: a mad Crey scientist decides he'd like a walking tour of Hell, so he creates a virus to send himself there, and to ensure that a hero comes to take him back, he releases it to the general public. I didn't really get the point of the detour into Oranbega -- if the Circle were in such dire straits that they'd be coming forward voluntarily, striking out to take some of them down would be counterproductive.

Design - *. Three consecutive unnanounced timed missions. Agh. A boss group composed entirely of Circle Archmages. Aaagh. A group composed entirely of lieutenant and boss enemies, many with tier 9 powers, most with Build Up. Aaaaagh. Having to lead a damageable minion through said group and somehow come out the other side. MAGNA AAGH.

Gameplay - *. MAGNA AAGH. I feel this is all I can say on a family-friendly forum. The first mission is somewhat reasonable, but the last two are exercises in cranial-architectural interfacing.

Detail - **. None of the custom enemies had any descriptions - they were all using the default description for their rank. The archmages also have their default descriptions, even the custom ones, even the ones who pass off clues that ought to be their descriptions for all the relevant info they give you. And then there's that doubled-up clue in the second mission.

Overall - *. Not an average. The second mission was a giant slog of a boss fight. The third mission was a giant slog in every fight followed by a task which may be a mathematical impossibility unless you see it coming and try to lose the hostage so he can't run into the middle of the lieutenants' zone of death. I might have come away with a slightly more favorable impression if the escort was non-combat, but the crazily high difficulty of the custom enemies and the mandatory-defeat group made of archmages were the real pains here.

I haven't had a lot of free time this Thanksgiving weekend, but I did have a little time to draw up a random mission and go To Hell And Back (43610). Verdict - *. Review lower in this thread.

Also because it's gone up and I had a bit of time to spare, The Fall Of Rapture (299507). Verdict - **. Review in MA Forums Thread.

@GlaziusF

Taking a look at this with a level 50 spine/regen scrapper, all bosses no AVs 2 heroes at +0.

Also, this arc ID seems to have changed to 287046.

---

Hmm. Starts off pretty standard - the Council take some parts to make a portal to Reichsman's world. I think they've actually been there a couple times already, but it's not like old plans suddenly become useless.

So I drop the boss, who tells me the parts are in another castle, and go running through the base to find some clues as apparently I picked one of the three routes without any glowies on it. I find several decoy crates and a terminal with a shipping destination, which has a nice ambush attached to it that would have meant something if the mission didn't just complete.

Yeah, I know it's almost impossible to do anything linear or guaranteed in a Council base. Not like it's a giant slog to go running around, though.

---

Okay, so the Council... bought black-market portal tech from someone else? I'm not sure what the comment about the shipping codes is supposed to mean, here.

Hmm. After I empty one crate I get a clue about all of them. I realize this is a limitation of the way clues for collection objectives work, but could you maybe fold that in with an end-of-the-mission clue? It's like being told in advance "okay, you're not going to accomplish anything, but here's some busywork".

It especially rankles since the map is huge and the crates take a while to examine.

On inspecting them all I fight a Vampyr who believes I've ninjaed his parts. He tries to flee at 25% (I believe) which is credible but doesn't really have much of a chance at success. He should probably bolt around the same time his support comes in if catching him is supposed to be a challenge.

The end clues for this mission and the last one have been redundant with things I've found in the missions themselves. I have two clues from this mission describing the scrap metal, and nothing else.

We actually possess text formatting tools in the Architect. You don't have to use underscores for emphasis. And "jacked" seems rather informal given the rather straightfaced tone the doc has been using to date.

---

And now, to a remote world to try and stop the Council from finding the Council Empire.

Good job on the technicians' part. Nemesis shows up trying to take down the Archon too, but the ambush gets caught up in a side group I didn't clear. No love lost there.

Though given how many Nemesises are out there in the multiverse I can't draw any conclusions about this being interference from Nemesis on the mainland.

Outdoor maps are a tricky thing to populate. Too few objectives and somebody can be running around through a giant mass of spawns to find the one thing that matters. Too many and you up the odds that one of them's going to end up in a blind corner or otherwise overlooked.

I think with, what is it, 7 destructibles, 4 hostages, and a boss fight? This map has just a few too many. It helps a bit for recognition if the objectives are "noisy" -- the beacons themselves are just fine but the techs, boss, and computer could do with some poses with extra geometry or particle effects.

Again, I get an end-mission clue pretty much replicating the boss defeat clue - the Archon told me where he came from, so I'm going there. ...so was that internecine fighting that led to the scrap shipment, then?

---

Ah, a Nemesis Rex world. I can't think that the techies would be too keen on random dimensions given how many of them there are that are full of things that try to kill us, but I guess under time pressure you do what you can.

So, while I'll see as soon as I click the light column, I'd still kind of like the technician to tell me whether I'm going into a Council base or the alternate world to wreck these things.

Oh. It's a tech lab. ...a Council tech lab, or? Anyway, there are lots of talky fights and patrols. My standard spiel: you only need one talky, unless the others say something different. One loud, N-1 quiet. My other standard spiel: battles can and do start when heroes are just getting off the elevator.

I finally find one of the things I'm looking for on the top floor, and the system text and clue text act like I've just wrecked all of them.

Anyway, once they're all down, mission's over. That easily? With how the scientist was talking, about the need to get a team since Nemesis would reinforce his forces, I was expecting... at least an ambush. Or a surprise boss objective. But nope, neither.

Ah, okay. So I was going to another dimension to do this mission, and they found out where the base was when I shut the portal.

...but didn't I already get the base's location from that Archon I dropped in the ruined world?

---

Anyway, burning question: why the scrap metal? Why the diversion?

Oh. My contact found out... somehow, that it was just a head fake for the heroes.

That's a little disappointing. I was expecting shenanigans.

Anyway, in addition to some vital devices to destroy, there's some equipment here to recover. Still crated up, too. What was it, spare parts? Put in the particle impellers and say they fold up for easy carrying or something?

Huh. And after some explosions and glowie clicks... that's it. Mission over. Arc over.

...aw phooey. And logged out before this mission, forgot to check my clue window when I logged back in, and thereby overwrite all my souvenirs. Happy happy joy joy.

---

Storyline - ***. My main problem here is the pacing. This arc has three missions with boss fights and two missions where I just have to destroy something - and the "destroy" missions are the last two. That feels more than a little anticlimactic. And the fourth mission I fend off an attack from Nemesis Rex... and then mission five is playing repo man for Portal Corp. I mean, sure, I set out to get the portal tech back from the Council but preventing Nemesis Rex from getting a beachhead in our dimension is probably a little more important than that, right?

So here's something. Mission three is set up to give me the base location anyway, per the clues I get. So in mission 4 I go in there, there's Nemesis in the base for whatever reason, and I get the parts back -- and in mission 5 Nemesis Rex, who was keeping the portal open from his end, busts out in Portal Corp and I have to take out his troops and either some fakes or the man himself there. That wraps up the earlier plotline just in time for the new pressure to hit.

Also I'm really not sure about the whole "distracted by scrap" thing. I mean, on the one hand, it's a reasonable thing for the Council to do. On the other hand, the question of why it happened is hanging in the air through the Nemesis Rex mission, implying that this was some new wrinkle that's gonna be even better than Nemesis -- and then it gets resolved in the briefing of the last mission.

Design - ***. Man. I coulda taken ANYBODY through this arc. But I saw the big orange archvillain text and figured, "welp, somebody has high frustration tolerance". I'm guessing Nemesis himself was supposed to show up in mission 4? I never even saw him. I realize this arc was probably made in the days before they put auto-warnings on, but would help a lot if it were billed as "no required EB/AVs" or something similar. Or tagged "easy". The overabundance of objectives in mission 3 was a bit of a problem. The several occasions where a clue and/or system message pop up on a single objective that make more sense coming from completing all of them were momentarily disorienting as well.

Gameplay - ****. Most of the tear-my-hair-out moments were pretty minor and just involved covering large Council/outdoor maps looking for objectives. Not in themselves a pain, but as I said earlier some kind of visual noise around an overworld objective is always helpful, especially since hostages don't flee on outdoor maps.

Detail - ****. Some duplicate mission end clues and a lot of duplicate dialogue from battles and patrols that didn't really need to be there. But aside from the need for a little pruning, everything looked pretty reasonable.

Overall - ***. The arc needs to be relabeled so that it's clear that it's solo friendly, but more importantly the missions need to be restructured so that the last mission is the big confrontation with the Nemesis forces from another dimension, rather than just cleanup of all the plot points the actual climactic mission couldn't resolve.

I think one of the problems with genuine multidimensional gameplay is that you run into the Shadowrun problem - your face is charming the guard, your mage is scouting for astral security, your rigger's piloting a drone to scout for physical security, your decker is diving into the building's cyberspace, and your street samurai is cooling his heels in the team van waiting for the GM to finish adjudicating all four of those people's special snowflake sidesessions. And none of them can help the others.

4E D&D tried to get around this with skill challenges, rather open-ended event resolution mechanics that rely on the DM to give most of the party members a chance at doing something on their own that still contributes to the overall party success, but it pretty much requires human intervention for a successful resolution and the plastic nature of the game has led some wags to observe that every skill in the game can be used to, say, get a cat out of a tree.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a level 50 spine/regen scrapper, all bosses no AVs 2 heroes at +0.

---

Okay, it generally helps to offer up a statement of the mission objective in the mission briefing.

Carnies... and the Circle. Uh, okay. Let's see what this is, then.

The cops have already collared one boss when I step in. Good for them.

Oh gawww. No! Bad! Arch-Mages are like bosses with 75% resistances to everything! DO NOT USE IN REGULAR SPAWNS UNLESS YOU LIKE INFLICTING PAIN ON PLAYERS.

And then I find the boss. I was expecting a joke on how you occasionally get Strongmen voicing Carnie lines, but nope, boss level War Mace/Waste Your Time, er, Regen with Instant Healing.

Apparently he's decided to take off his helmet and make a name for himself, which is kind of odd since as far as I knew the Strongmen were just psychically dominated meatwalls.

He's about halfway up the building. The ascent continues!

Hmm. A cloud of steamy mist with no obvious source. Ah! Hello, ally.

So somehow, I know Shanghai is hanging out here? ...alright.

Ah. There she is. After I run downstairs, to the entrance, and back up, she was in the boss room all along.

Okay. Her body hop is a sort of free-roaming thing that doesn't need physical contact? It would have been nice of you to say something about that, Lumi.

---

Carnies raiding the Library? I can buy what they'd be doing there, but it honestly strikes me as a bit off. Generally they prefer to put on a show and siphon off some exuberance. If they're going to kill someone then they take the whole thing so it doesn't go to waste, but absent any particular malice on the Circle's part I can't see them wanting the Library.

Both the Circle and the Carnies operate under their own twisted territorial moralities. I guess the Library might be particularly tempting even if they're not planning to consume it, just use it as a large "captive audience".

Two important notes: first, allies or captives with auras will run them and damage their captors. They may even kill them before the hero actually shows up.

Second, not only can battles start when heroes aren't there, it's exceedingly rare for them to start when heroes ARE there.

I get an electric blast ally but it doesn't seem to be necessary, this is just a normal Carnie boss. She even pops her Mask of Vitiation trying to handle one of the battle groups that gets out of hand. (Air Thorns fly EVERYWHERE.)

Seems an awful waste of a big outdoor map just to put one boss fight in it.

---

And, alright, there's a massive prison break in progress by some factions who want to get the villain to work for them, so I go in to smack all of them upside the head. Works for me.

Huh. Looks like a whole bunch of other villain groups have decided to show up. After the same guy?

Judging by his description it would seem so.

Also when I pop Ohmboy free I get some cop reinforcements who are allies. Not sure what to make of that.

Also Shanghai shows up immediately after I spring Junk, when she should probably be around after I drop him off if the PPD allies who show up then are supposed to be an indication. Pretty sure that "rescue" is the tag for the spring and the objective is for the delivery.

Lumi says I'm "right to be suspicious of Ohmboy". Did I... have a reason for that? Given all the other possibilities crawling around that prison compound I'm not sure I'd make the leap automatically.

---

The Circle would apparently steal and use a piece of tech to keep Shanghai out of their library. Doesn't seem their style.

But they're here busting things up.

Shanghai in her new body is here, as is Acupuncher.

...okay, I actually expected a puncher out of that name, but whatever.

I find Dr. Aldritch, who tells me he's finished the prototype and runs off... with no clue of where it is. Perhaps this "Ophelia" in the navbar knows where to find it.

Apparently she's a Carnie Ring Mistress. She doesn't say anything, and drops down off the top rope while I'm fighting some Circle.

When I take down the last jugglers in her spawn, the mission completes. Somehow. No clue, no system text, no nothing.

Oh! Okay, the mission was just to spring the doc. ...so why didn't it complete until I took out the Carnie?

---

And now it's time for the denouement. That's French for "when the villain gets it". ...on a cargo ship. Um, yay?

The ship is full of Freakshow. Why is the ship full of Freakshow?

Anyway, I pick up the various swapped-around people on my way to the back, take out Junk (MA/Robotics), and then drop Shanghai, who's inside Acupuncher, a Spine/Waste Your Time, er, Regen with access to Instant Healing.

And, jammed in that body and focus-fired by four ally bosses, she doesn't have much chance. Once Instant Healing drops, anyway.

And that's all. Not even a souvenir for my troubles.

---

Storyline - ***. Couple problems. I don't really buy the reasons given, but I can buy the Carnies and the Circle coming to blows, especially if the Circle are doing something in one of the Carnies' adopted neighborhoods. In fact, that can be part of the investigation in the first mission - the Circle grabbed a few people the Carnies considered themselves as protecting, then the Carnies jacked some Circle mages, and back and forth et cetera. Also, why does Shanghai keep jumping between heroes? A keen desire for irony? Seems like it'd be better to jump into some innocent civilian and then slip under the radar, at least with a manhunt on. (Also I was kinda expecting Shanghai to brain-jump in at least one of the missions, with that ally betrayal code that's so popular these days.)

Design - ***. Some issues with timing and completion - a boss fight as the only required objective on an outdoor map (if the ally was required, he freed himself), the early appearance of Shanghai at the prison break, the seemingly superfluous Carnie boss in mission 4. Also, the last map is full of Freakshow. I don't know why. Did they all just decide to hop a lift to the Rogue Isles? Does Junk have a large following of Freakshow fanboys?

Gameplay - ****. No real annoyances, aside from the Arch-Mages and the self-imposed backtracking in the first mission. But the final mission was a bit of a letdown. Four bosses vs. an EB is more than an even match just on the face of it. I appreciate seeing them again for the comedy one-liners, but if you have space maybe you can rank 'em down a bit to represent the lack of expertise in controlling another hero's powers? (Shanghai doesn't operate under this limitation, obviously.)

Detail - ***. I don't think I get any clues after mission 2. Especially since I was supposed to be drawing conclusions about stuff, like Ohmboy or Dr. Aldritch's device, that didn't get a chance to really shine in the limited space available in the NPC dialog window. Ophelia in mission 4 is a complete enigma, with no dialogue, system text on defeat, or clue text on death.

Overall - ***. Needs a better Carnie/Circle backing story and a little more consideration given to objective timing. And some more clues never hurt anybody.

Last night's random arc: Catching Lightning in a Bottle (60639). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.
Tonight's first random arc: Impossible Kung Fu Mission (111367), previously reviewed. Verdict - ****.
Tonight's second random arc: Tangled Webs and Reflecting Mirrors 1: The Deal (133330). Review... not forthcoming. The arc seems to have been invalidated by an update and subsequently removed.
Tonight's third random arc: Origins - Volume 1 (57077). Review also not forthcoming. The author has three extant arcs and this one seems to have been removed.
Tonight's fourth random arc: Leaving Crey (301947), previously reviewed. Verdict - ****.
Tonight's FIFTH random arc: Through a Portal, Darkly (287046). Note new arc ID. Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

I do most things with the numpad.

Offensive powers (blaster/defender/corruptor/mastermind blast, controller control, scrapper/tanker/brute/stalker melee, dominator assault) go on the plain numpad.

Utility powers (blaster manipulation, defender/corruptor/mastermind/controller buff, dominator control, scrapper/tanker/brute/stalker defense) go on ctrl+numpad.

Inspirations go on alt-numpad, 1 through 7 for heal/end/offense/accuracy/defense/breakfree/damres. Smallest first to maximize churn.

Mastermind controls go on shift-numpad.

Exceptions: damaging toggle powers always go on ctrl+numpad. Self-heals go on alt/ctrl/shift+numpad0. Build Up or similar go on alt/ctrl/shift+decimal. Travel powers and leadership go on the math parts of the numpad. Anything that needs a mouseclick goes on a chorded mouse button. Teleport goes on the right button so I can confirm the recticle.

@GlaziusF

Since this is supposed to be solo unfriendly, playing this on a pretty tough solo: my level 50 spine/regen scrapper. All bosses no AVs 2 heroes at +0.

---

Wow. Taking orders from a box of scrap electronics. How the mighty have fallen.

Well, not like I have any better leads on this strangeness among AIs. ...or any idea what it actually represents.

When I spring the ally in the mission (grav/kin seems to be a natural synergy) I get a clue from DATA that "the outbreaks are getting worse". Well, okay, but... WHAT's getting worse? Are they shutting down? All facing the same direction and listening? Doing multiple indefinite encores of Hello Dolly?

Fighting goes pretty well, but this dude needs to not have Dimension Shift. He pulls it out rarely enough but I'm talking, like, EVER.

Ah, that's what we're here for. The HVAS.

Something... else (?) cuts in through its battle diagnostics as it goes down.

Apparently its mobo got gooped up but given how much blue the weapons put out that's not surprising.

My contact seems to think he knows what's going on and we can take care of this easily, but the arc length suggests something else is at work.

---

My contact says "this time it's an Arachnos lab", which I guess means that's where the next.. major outbreak is? Or clue to what's going on here?

On springing an Arachnos trooper I find out that the virals had better not get at the Arbiter drones. But.. aren't they kinda made of people?

This mission features a larger cast of viral robots, including what looks like custom repair bots and drone controllers.

Robot chatter is kinda amusing. The boss less so, since he manages to land a Siphon Speed, run away, get stuck behind some crates, and summon up a giant swarm of robots while we're dealing with his entourage.

Interesting concept though.

---

My contact seems to be throwing more and more apostrophes in as time goes on. He's getting a bit impenetrable.

Hmm. It looks like, in creating the "besieged Malta", you've broken the usual moratorium on Sappers the game generally imposes.

Sometimes they show up multiple times per spawn!

I spring Crimson, who talks up my contact but I get a note in the clue window that there's something suspicious about him.

Apparently this is supposed to come after I find the intel about Crimson being in China, but it's in the last compartment (along with the parts) and Crimson was in the first one.

---

Hmm. Does the end of the briefing suggest that my contact is being compromised, too?

There seem to be two quarreling factions here. It doesn't look as though the conversion process works well on things from a parallel earth, as they've just started fighting everything.

Inside I find... oh. A PPD Quantum who has... somehow conjured up a stone mallet to beat on some robots?

Anyway, I free him and then take on a boss... with an escort made up entirely of other boss robots.

Once he goes down, the system text says something about how the news is both good and bad and I should get back to my contact... but I haven't found any clues on this mission at all.

I go back through the mission, find another Quantum, but... that's it. No clues to be had.

---

So, one last mission.

I'm not really sure why this one is supposed to be the hard one considering the hoops I've jumped through before. Is it the last ambush of lieutenants?

I get three boss allies, two of whom slaughter their guards before I get there thanks to their damage auras.

Four destructibles later, it's all over. Not even a final boss to kiss goodnight.

---

Storyline - ***. This is a hard one. I picked up that something was weird when the bosses started calling me "variable" in the middle of their rants. At first I thought it might be a perjorative, but no, it was being used literally. I'm not sure exactly how to interpret what's going on here, though. The underlying "test" slips through more and more each mission, my contact is furthering my distrust of it by calling out its own mistakes -- and apparently my hero takes the last mission at face value? I get that the whole thing is a dry run by some would-be AI overlord but how am I supposed to take the souvenir? "Well played old chap see you next game"? Weren't people actually getting attacked by these things? How much of it all was a lie? Because I'm disposed to toss a comically-large anarchist bomb into that bin of parts and start hunting down the Perfect Machine fo'realz. Putting innocent people in harm's way just so you can avoid doing it on a grand scale is hardly laudable.

I can buy the idea of finding myself inside a robot uprising and having it turn out to just be a test, but... an actual test, on a more limited scale. Maybe DATA's looking to get some more combat data off a bunch of captured robots, and "what do you mean they called you fleshbag and ranted about organic tyranny, oh these heroes and their fantasies". Or just... someone, somewhere I can actually trust.

Design - ***. Not too sure about the wings on the summoner robot. They seem a bit extraneous. Aside from that the customs are pretty reasonable.

Not sure about the progression, though. Elite boss first map, normal boss second map, boss clusters on the third and fourth maps (on the third map they take out my supposed ally)... and the last map is just a bunch of destructibles, without any guaranteed boss?

There's a problem with the order objectives show up on the third map, in that I find Crimson before anything vouching for him, and I had Titans show up blocking the door of several compartments so Crimson actually bit it trying to fight them.

I realize you're supposed to avoid the Titans, but since they can park themselves in front of the passages between compartments it may be better to put some Herc Titans in the rogue spawn as well. A sufficiently difficult battle will put a Zeus in sometimes anyway.

Gameplay - ***. And peel out the Sappers from the rogue Malta, can you? Not using the standard Malta spawn means Sappers are fair game in spawns, sometimes multiple times per. If you wanted to make a balanced Titan squad you could put together some sapper stick/gun drone amalgam to be a minion, maybe. Trying to endure focused fire from five bosses in mission 5 while beating down one of them was also a bit much, even if I had two potential bosses as distractions.

Also, mission 4 had me backtracking looking for some kind of clue I was supposed to have found, per the system message for the police chief defeat -- but as far as I could see there wasn't anything there.

Detail - ***. Or maybe I can actually trust my contact, I just can't understand him because of all the faux folksy apostrophes. Here's the thing about English - it's only 25% efficient, so it can tolerate a bit of noise and still get the message across. Tossing in apostrophes constitutes noise, and there are usually far too many for me to understand a sentence at a quick run. Pare them down by about half, maybe more.

Aside from that, everything looked more or less alright, but putting a faction of "shameless self-inserts" in the last mission massacred the last chance I had of taking it remotely seriously.

Overall - ***. A more understandable contact, a plot that left me sure of something, a final mission that was actually as challenging as advertised, or prior enemy groups that weren't composed entirely of bosses would help this out.

I apologize.

I let myself rant self-indulgently and went off on a wild argumentative tangent that didn't help anyone, let alone myself.

So, back to what I was saying in the first place.

An MMO is a shared social space where people can explore/defeat the world/other players.

That two-by-two matrix comes from Richard Bartle's observations on the behaviors of players in his MUD. He called the archetypes he observed Explorers, Achievers, Socializers, and Killers. (actually they were types of behavior and should be gerunds, but people have a real problem with abstract concepts having their own motivations. And not without reason. What would the world be like if blue got restless?)

Explorers explore the world. They learn. Whether it's what's over that mountain or how that thing called "defense" actually works, they acquire knowledge for themselves. An MMO makes explorers happy to the extent that it has interesting things to see and consistent patterns to discover, and can frustrate them if the world is empty and bland or seems to operate under arbitrary rules.

Achievers defeat the world. They set goals and take actions to accomplish them. An MMO makes achievers happy to the extent that it suggests implicit or overt goals and provides a means to accomplish them and a record of accomplishments, and can frustrate them if they can't set a goal or work out how to accomplish one.

Socializers explore other players. They talk and listen, give help and take it, entertain and are entertained, sympathize and seek sympathy. An MMO makes socializers happy to the extent that they can meet and talk to people and enjoy it, and frustrates them if communication isn't expressive or is otherwise limited.

Killers defeat other players. I think this is where the idea of "conflict-games" would have fit in before I fell in love with the sound of my own voice. Killers don't want to destroy, they want to compete. An MMO makes them happy to the extent that it provides enough variety in competitions or competitors that they feel they can make themselves a chance to win, and frustrates them to the extent that they can't find good competition.

But the people playing the game want to do all four of these things. At different times, in different amounts, sometimes together, sometimes not.

So where does "gear" in the sense of "possessions" come into all this? You can find it while exploring, or discover how to create it. You can set goals to obtain it, or get it to mark an accomplishment. You can give it to or receive it from other people. You can compete to acquire it, or receive it when you win a competition.

And you can use it to explore or research, to find goals or accomplish them, to communicate or entertain, to compete or to win.

And best of all, since you want to do all four of those things, at different times, in different amounts, you can use a possession you got from doing one thing to help you do something else, or get a possession that helps with one thing by doing something else.

This is especially true if you can convert these possessions to and from some sort of universal currency.