GlaziusF

@GlaziusF

Running this on a high 30s archery/energy blaster, all bosses no AVs 1 hero at +1.

---

Man. I wish I had a hardboiled detective character. Then I could start making jokes about the dame who walked into my office.

Anyway, I head off to what may very well be a death trap, and run into...

Er.

For my sanity I'm going to pretend these enemies are all like Lantern constructs or something. Probably saves you a bundle on costume space.

I'm seeing minions with... resurgence, and... is that Thunderous Blast or did they change the Zapp animation? The arch/TA boss is actually less of a threat.

Oh, and detention field. At least it gives me a chance to pop Aid Self.

I pick up my plot coupon for the next mission and head out.

---

Yeah. I really need a hardboiled detective character right about now. Good lord, briefing.

Actually, scratch that. Usually the dames end up being in with the Russkies or something when you're a hardboiled private eye. Too much hassle.

My contact does what I could not and reads the plot coupon to figure out where I'm going to go.

Ah, hostages. This shipman's description still thinks he's in the Shadow Shard.

Hmm. Now that I'm seeing more of the enemy group, some of the powers don't quite match up color-wise. Rad blasts on Peach, fire on Mercury, psychic blasts on Sky.

(also check the powers for Sky, she's not worth any XP indicating you've dropped off a standard power. Which is kind of a joke given that she's got psychic wail on her.)

...for some reason there's a constant background noise of a dispatcher in this cargo ship.

Can't think why.

Also, Mercury has Rise of the Phoenix. Naturally. And she's control-proof, at least from a stun perspective, which is all I have.

Man, Full Auto in addition to detention field? On a minion? Good lord.

So I run all the way back to the back of the ship freeing crewmen.

Then I have to find the captain, so I run all the way back to the front of the ship checking around for nooks and crannies.

Now I have to find the diamonds (the captain's guard spells it "diaonds") so I run all the way back to the back of the ship checking around et cetera...

I find an oil barrel on top of a stack of cargo crates amidships. It's glowing, and I don't think I remember it from before. So I click it, and I wonder why the captain didn't just tell me he put them in an oil barrel.

...and then I get the heck out of Dodge as I hear armor toggles going on. Of all the spawn points in all the cargo ship, the boss had to spawn right next to the glowie.

Man, the Rularuu axe and shield look freaky when they're white. But she's got Active Defense so I can't stun her or knock her around or keep range at all.

You should probably rearrange objectives so the boss comes after the captain. That way her clue shows up after his in the clue window....

Though it's not much of a clue. "I'll get you next time" is de riguer for villains these days.

---

So, much like the first mission, I'm taking a tip from my contact to go break up something she was supposed to help with.

It's a drug deal this time. Or at least I think it is, but it seems to be just a lab with a tiny Council incursion that's over before I get there. (Though the dialogue assumes I've gotten there, I never make it to any of these things in time) No clue what they're making, but it blows up onomatopoeically. Kinda seems redundant given that I'm already hearing these sounds from my attacks connecting and the thing going boom, and the dialogue box for objects spawns under the map somewhere, which is just odd.

(The guards are just saying "Gossip..." Was this a note for you to fill in something later?)

The mission exit clue seems to think it was a drug deal as well, but there was no one there buying and/or selling.

---

Oh boy, surprise timed rescue mission. (seriously, work that limit into the mission briefing somehow, I put dinner on hold for this)

For someone who doesn't fancy body paint my contact's laying it on awfully blue.

...Greater Ice Sword and Thunderous Blast. On minions. One of many ways a blaster gets two-shot.

So when the bombs go out, a whole raft of bosses show up to investigate. Can be nasty if you get caught next to one.

And now for the hostage...

Oh! I THOUGHT she looked familiar.

Maemae von Whooters, ladies and gentlemen. You may hide your name, you may hide your enemy group, but you can never hide your unique enemy type.

You know what'd be great? An arc was about the colors coming out of TV and going on a rampage.

---

Ah, the Marchand penthouse.

Unfortunately there's really no predictability to be had here. The map's still bugged. You put a boss in the back, you might wind up fighting them on the second floor.

Like me, right now.

No warning about the EB here either, though I expected one anyway.

Ah, the Romulus sword and shield. I was half expecting a dark dwarf with the boss name.

---

Storyline - ***. Some comics you buy at your Favorite Local Comic Shop. Some comics show up in your mailbox in a brown paper wrapper. This is one of the latter. My own personal misgivings aside (for some reason interactive Harlequin Romances skeeve me out even worse than the regular kind) the story here is pretty simple: repentant criminal wants to make good before they get sent to the slammer. I could see this being about some Family made man -- minus the violations of my personal space, naturally. It's a little up in the air where my contact stands with the law later on - I could swear she was going through the courts at about the time she decided to throw herself on the not-hardly-mercies of her gang in mission 4. There were a lot of smaller things up in the air, really - more on that below.

Design - ***. If nothing else the solid colors made it easy to develop associations between enemies and their powersets, even if they didn't always match up tint-wise. Super strength is more golden than energy melee, force fields are green but get shot by a brown minion, et cetera. Sometimes powers went off a property of the name - Copper shot electricity, Mercury was en fuego like her namesake planet - but I would have liked to see more of a consistent match between particle effects and solid color. (also you'll want to check on Sky's powersets, as I said she's worth no XP which means she's missing a standard diff power somewhere) I'm not going to dock you for Marchand's Penthouse not having a nice boss fight on the roof/in the office, because that's unpredictable. But the cargo ship in mission 2 and warehouse in mission 4 both had essential objectives -- the captain and MaeMae (er, my contact) -- placed somewhere in the Middle of the map but spawned on a chain, which is a lot of ground to re-cover looking for them. The cargo ship in particular with its four chained objectives was a little much back and forth - maybe put the captain on from the start and keep the crew around as optional "flavor" detail.

Gameplay - **. In addition to the running about over empty maps trying to get things done, the enemies are pitched a bit unreasonably hard. Tier 9 rezzes, nukes, and melee attacks on minions and lieutenants? Getting detention fielded on a timed mission? Bit of a sticking point. And there's nothing in the briefings about that timed mission, or about the final boss. Generally those get picked out in color in the intro screen.

Detail - **. Most of the incidental details in this arc tell instead of showing. I get a clue that "tells me where the gang is going next"... okay, clue, so why not spell out where they're going? The captain "tells me where to find the diamonds", but even if he only said "I hid 'em in a barrel amidships' that'd be some help in scouring this entire map for one glowie. There's a drug lab, but no indication of what drugs are getting brewed, who's buying, or who's selling. The threat to my contact's family and the directions for where to go both happen offscreen, and I never see them - would it hurt to see the ransom note as a start-mission clue?

Overall - **. Personal objections to raciness aside, there's the core of an interesting story here. If these enemies represent a reasonable threat without their tier 9s, cap the arc at an appropriate level. If you'd like them to have their full suite of tricks, floor the arc so that people have to face them. And whatever you do give the mind-kin lieut back whatever standard power is robbing her of experience. A little shuffling and reassigning to give everybody chromatically appropriate abilities wouldn't be a bad idea, either. The second and fourth missions could use a little cleaning up to reduce the back-and-forth, especially the second map, which has a million places to hide anything. And there's a lot of unnecessary indirection in the arc, with clues telling me I've found things or know things when they could just be telling me what those things are.

Last night I played Very Bad Girls (286566). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.

I believe it's the last of Escalus's arcs I had on my plate, and I'd like to thank him for his generally cordial response to being a weekly punching bag.

---

Mission Architect isn't about the handful of arcs that make Dev's Choice or hit the hall of fame. Underneath that is a vast sea of, well, vanity publishing. I don't mean that as an insult. You can take whatever idea you have in your head, strain it through the filter of what the tools let you do, and put it out there for you and your friends to play and rake in similar rewards to what you'd get playing the game anyway.

I've said several times that one individual rating doesn't matter. If you don't have enough ratings to get your arc noticed by the general public, you need more word of mouth and promotion than one vote is able to give you. If you do, one rating isn't going to mean much.

But that's just a theory of mine. I have no idea whether or not it'll hold up. If I think one rating doesn't matter, and there are people who thing it does, why not just vote 5 and be done with it?

---

I told you that story so I could tell you this one: I am now. At least in game. Every arc the system remembers I've played (you can toggle the advanced search to twig on arcs you've played and voted on, or not) is getting 5ed as soon as I can get around to voting on them.

I'll still put "real" star ratings up on CoHMR, and in my thread posts.

And in addition to that, I'm offering just plain ol' feedback, if anyone's interested. I'll assume an arc that goes up on CoHMR is ready for prime time, but if yours isn't yet, just post it in the thread, along with whether or not you'd like your feedback public or private, and you'll get it. But with no ratings, and no in-game vote. (Once the arc's finished you can ask for another run the same as anyone else.)

This is also going in the first post.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a high 40s DB/fire brute, all bosses no AVs 2 villains at +1.

---

Ah, Phipps. One of the more hilarious things about him was how he'd snap into character all of a sudden. Hope I see some of that.

Also I think the briefing and sendoff for mission 1 would work better reversed. Set up the do-gooders doing good in the briefing, briefly describe them and their goals in the sendoff.

Heading into the mission and fighting down. Quick note: all the minions have the typo "serve thier purpose" in their description.

Other note: "a hundredfold" doesn't refer to something like a hundred people. It's a multiplier. Seed that produces a hundredfold produces a hundred seeds for every one planted. Saying that poisoning food will "kill a hundredfold" only makes sense if 99 people other than the one who eats the food will also die. Which, y'know, I wouldn't put it past certain bioagents? But I don't think that's what's happening here.

Might want to look into a little more contrast on the minions. under some lighting conditions it's hard to tell the dark purple medics from the black claw fighters.

And there's a hard ambush at the end, which while a thrill to unload AoEs on comes too late to matter.

...Phipps talking about a hot date? Dude's got a careful social facade to keep up. It's not that I couldn't see him going out with some NGO charity director and then "getting his coat" while the Bane Spiders swoop in, but y'know, put the riders on.

---

Little typo in the next mission's sendoff, "muscial" for "musical".

Next mission's navbar says "2 Destroy 2 Computers", which in addition to being the worst sequel to "Destroy All Computers" ever needs to be repluralized. "computers to destroy" or something like that.

Also, surprise bumfight.

Hmm. Is the safe supposed to be down on the first floor? Seems a bit odd that everything I had to do save one computer showed up there.

---

The start of the mission gives me an on-site report of hope in progress. Just kind of... out of the ether. Phipps doesn't say anything about it.

Also, dude is pissed. Exactly why I'm not entirely sure.

Huh. Okay, looks like the bum was actually part of the hero group. You should probably set him not to spawn in regularly.

You know the Council warehouse goes down to a Council cave complex, right?

The info on the doc I spring tells me he's made breakthroughs in time travel and parallel dimensions, which is not the sort of doctor who uses medical supplies. I'm guessing it's a default description.

He and the volunteer I rescue both are in the standard "captured (kneeling hands on head)" pose, which doesn't make sense given that they're here of their own free will.

The ending clue has "Phipps crackled", which I'm guessing should be "cackled".

---

So.

Enemy base.

EB with buildup, which I can manage.

Another one with a giant perception radius... and rage.

Rage means double damage that never misses. And that's horrible.

You know, I thought Too Much Information Mastery was an April Fool's joke. And here comes the boss, proving me wrong.

Wow. The combination of rage and willpower means I can't actually bring this boss down and then bolt during the rage, since the regen/resist factor is high enough that I can't actually deal enough damage.

I burn two Shivans to no effect. Dang Rise to the Challenge.

So, one reload on Shivans (that also reset the mission) and a sum total of FOUR Shivans later, it's finally over. Not even a closing clue.

---

Storyline - **. So there's this charitable organization, let's call them Angel International. They set up their little heavens in war-torn and dangerous areas all over the world, providing food, clothing, shelter, and that greatest of all treasures, which is Hope. And now they've come to the Rogue Isles. Well, Westin Phipps knows what to do about that!

Step 1: as founder of Haven House, meet with local civilian coordinator. Talk business.
Step 2: walk away to get coat. Push Arachnos panic button in lining of shirt. Return to find your new collaborator unaccountably gone with no clues left behind but an Arachnos Flier-shaped hole in the roof..
Step 3: the following day, lament publicly that you should have been spirited away by spiders instead.
Step 4: suspiciously well-coordinated villain attacks on remaining charity organization members are death blow for morale, Haven House is once again the only light of hope in Grandville.

Except Step 4 doesn't go as planned. The information was all a setup. And it turns out that the Arachnos strike team that was supposed to pull off step 2 never actually returned to base.

In the frantic investigation that follows, it turns out that Angel International's "civilian coordinator" was much more than she seemed, and as they have not done great things by being gullible simps, turned the tables on the Arachnos. And, having learned from the captured strike team what a fink-rat Westin Phipps is, they're going to tell everyone.

Until a villain raids their headquarters, destroys every last sliver of evidence, and runs off the lady in charge.

But Westin Phipps is livid anyway. Not because of any failure of the villain's, mind you. Because Angel International bought Haven House out from under him while he was distracted, so now dear old Westin Phipps can retire to the Bahamas and reap the reward of a life of community service. Dear old Westin Phipps is not going to stand for being made a fool of, and as soon as he has a plan ready and some favors called in, he and the villain are going to storm the gates of heaven. So to speak.

This arc's story is not that story. This arc's story is a crude copy, in multiple senses. The sisters just come out of nowhere, seem to treat Westin Phipps as exactly what he is instead of the front he puts up for the public, and lead him around with a femme fatale. It all feels rather arbitrary, like some cosmic GM got tired of his messing around and rolled up a grudge monster. There's also no real impetus for a second arc - the end boss's description mentions she's the second in command, but aside from the info window there's no indication we're not done yet.

Design - ***. The Sisters have pretty consistent costuming. Minions have Justice armor, a hood, and a lower-face mask. Lieuts have Ulterior armor and a Blast Bot helm. Bosses have angel wings and Crey Tech armor with an electron pattern, and an electron head. But what am I seeing with that progression? It looks like they're supposed to be getting more technological, but "Sisters of Light" doesn't sound very techie, and the angel wings would be tech wings in the final form. Also the dark purple minions are easy to confuse with black ones in poor lighting, and the blue accents on the Ulterior Armor make the fire and ice lieuts look more alike than they should. It also seems like the hobo is supposed to be a unique boss, but he shows up with other bosses in normal spawns.

Gameplay - **. Without Rage, the end boss would have been a formidable wall with a relentless attack chain, and overall a tough but satisfying fight. With Rage, the end boss is a lot of staring and waiting for the yellow aura of nearly instant death to go away, and then praying my Shivan can get in a lucky streak of hits before it's Rage time again.

Detail - *. TMI line rips at your mind for 432.15 points of psychic damage, and terrorizes you! You cower in fear!

Seriously. I could have lived a happy and productive life without contemplating the contents of Westin Phipps's pants. Also, there's no background in the description of any of the Sisters, just some practical notes, and there aren't any clues to their origins, either. They really do just seem to have come out of nowhere, which isn't a good thing given how savvy they are about the Rogue Isles. And my favorite part of Westin Phipps, the simpering spin-doctor public facade, doesn't show up at all. He's just a big ball of nerd rage.

Overall - **. An interesting new angle for Westin Phipps to pursue, dampened by a grudge-monster enemy group, an impenetrable wall of a final boss, and the lack of any more varied reaction from Westin Phipps than impotent rage.

Tonight's arc is a little something from the randomizer: Darken the Light: the Westin Phipps Strike Force (319423). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.

So how 'bout that Halloweening?

Tonight's arc: The Long Road Back (338602). Verdict - **. Review on MA Forums Thread.

@GlaziusF

Review written as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.

Playing this on a merc/TA mastermind, level >25. All bosses no AVs 1 villain at +0.

---

Hmm. Should that be "Louise" Symons? Her name in the briefing is "Lousie".

And there are plenty of people in the Rogue Isles who know how to do what Vazhilok does, including the Freakshow "meat doctors" and the various Facemakers. I'm not sure why this one person is special.

Alright, time to become a dog of the government.

Man. The asylum has just lost all mystique at this point and become straight-up annoying. i would not look down on a sewer map or abandoned office.

Hmm. So I find all the doc's files in the first room, on some weirdly clean-looking computers.

But I still have to drop the doctor? I mean, I'm pretty sure she didn't see me. Unless I'm supposed to be "going off-script" and taking her out anyway.

Whoof. That's got to be a hard ambush of zombies gnawing on the back of my head. Bit much for a 20 to handle - a mort, a reaper, 2 aboms, 2 boomin' aboms. Vahz double-dip with the zombies, so even reasonable-seeming sizes of ambushes will be quite large.

So the doc was an eidolon looking to go back, huh?

---

15 minutes means these comments come from memory.

It was kind of Patrick to leave his stuff in the one interactable unmarked box in the warehouse. But it seems kind of odd that Escobar spawns when I grab the personal effects rather than when I spring Pat. ("rescue is completed" is the trigger for when you free an escort.)

Also interestingly, Pat says "Jesus, man, I'm sorry. I don't wanna do this, but you ain't givin' me any choice." when fighting Escobar - I guess this is his 75% health line.

Little typo in Escobar's description: "Leonard Clahoun".

Also it seems odd that I get the clue about Pat, and for that matter the doc in the first mission, before the clue about the glowies, given that I found the glowies first. You can drag-n-drop them to swap them around.

---

Wait wait wait. Let me get this straight.

The ambassador has to consider Arachnos too risky to work with.

And he's meeting with Dr. Aeon. By all appearances willingly.

I'm not sure if there's anything I could do that'd be worse than springing Dr. Aeon.on somebody. But I'll do my best.

The system text for Arroyo going down is just "Arroyo defeated". And how 'bout that? He comes with another hard ambush. At least this one's from the same direction so my debuff patches work.

And an easy ambush for Sandoval, after some hot merc-on-merc action. He should at least be a lieutenant, otherwise he'd barely have time to say anything before the ambush hits.

The system text says I need to return to Savage, but there are still Arachnos left in the base. It should probably say something different.

The start and end clues are kinda weird. The start gives me 30 minutes to take out Sandoval, even though the mission's on a 45-minute timer, and the end tells me I've taken out Sandoval and should return to Savage. Which... uh, duh. That's what the Mission Complete means.

---

I'm getting the sneaking suspicion I'm actually working for Malta. I mean, I blow up Arachnos negotiations, now I'm going to smear someone stateside -- I'm doing terrible things to anybody who i might take sides with later on.

I stealth upstairs in the office. Normal ambush of security guards on planting the fake files, hard ambush of cops on the safe - I guess I'm supposed to leave 'em behind as they put me on the floor when I tried to stand up to 'em.

The start clue just says "Senator Brackett", and the end is a summary of what I just did. My memory's not so bad as all that.

Savage says I can keep whatever else I took from the safe - you mean the old paper financial records? The clue doesn't say anything about helping myself to a little folding money.

---

"What I'm going to ask you to do isn't pretty. In or out?" Yeah, uh, before I go clicking accept I'd rather actually know what I'm agreeing to.

Freakin' bureaucrats. Can't get clearance to find out about the mission before I accept the mission.

Hmm. The custom minions in here have no description on them. Well, the staff member does but the rest are blank.

You know removing a standard power, including the "melee set ranged attack", makes something worthless in terms of XP and other rewards, right?

Wait. These guys don't even have any attacks, do they?

...you know, it'd probably be less hassle on any modest-damage archetype if you either got rid of the "defeat all enemies" part of this or only put down a few special spawns and left the rest of the map empty.

Man, I figured this was some kind of training place for metapowered youth, but it's civvies all the way down. As it is, I just spent several minutes watching my mercs reload for nothing. Absolutely nothing.

---

Storyline - *. It'd be easier to buy this going the other way. A hero gets too much heat on them or finds their family in danger, so the shady government agency offers to give 'em a "clean" out in exchange for springing an Outcast, bringing in a rogue doctor, smearing a Senator, assassinating an ambassador, and mowing down orphans with a machine gun and setting them on fire. As it is the arc seems to operate under the principle that villains are that way because they contain entirely too many puppies and rainbows (while true of some, it rapidly becomes untrue after a few visits to the Zig latrine) and regard their progress toward the wholesale slaughter of innocents as a bad and regrettable thing.

Design - ***. Might be a bit higher if I hadn't played so many arcs already, but the asylum is just getting a bit old. The handful of customs are pretty reasonable, but anything you want to stick around to say words really needs to be at least a lieutenant. And that last mission either needs less whittling down little piles of hit points or none at all.

Gameplay - **. Way too many enemies in most of those ambushes for a lowbie to handle, and the entire last mission was a boring waste of time. Just watching the little orange numbers tick off, again and again and again.

Detail - ***. It's fairly solidly presented, but the missing descriptions on most of the minions in the last mission and the empty clue to start the first mission just shouldn't be there, and I really didn't get the point of the opening/closing clues to each mission that recap the mission briefing or the mission itself.

Overall - **. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. It you wanted to get ennui out of me, congratulations, you succeeded. But for an arc that's supposed to be about turning my back on my old ways, there's an awful lot of slaughter and destruction just on my boss's say-so. Really it's no different from working for Arachnos, except I can't go do extracurricular mayhem anymore.

That poor RNG is gonna choke at this rate.

But okay, let's do this: "Bricked Electronics", ID 2180, by @GlaziusF.

Hope you're not bored with Goldbrickers!

I'd like the option to have the ambush that comes after a destructible object say something, as well as explicitly set its "difficulty" (easy/medium/hard).

Welcome to the club, Chesh. Backwards Day (329000) is my a) newest b) weirdest, but anything in the sig is fair game if you've a mind.

(also you wanna toss your arcs on my thread?)

@GlaziusF

Reviewed on a low 40s ice/axe brute, all bosses no AVs two heroes at +0.

---

So I remember a little throwaway line during one of the Banished Pantheon arcs, about how a collection of books you found would help a contact understand the mystic arts of the Tsoo.

Not that I'm expecting anything, mind.

Hmm. Something you should know: you can put a comma after a $variable, as in "$name," and it will actually just put the name with a comma, straight after.

Something else you should know: it's really hard to read paragraphs with only one hard return between them. Use two.

Are you trying to go for an 'English is my second language" feel with the contact here? It feels rather stilted and circuitous.

As I haven't played this whole thing, I have no idea whether my contact is going to betray me or not, but if he isn't, could I suggest making him a Midnighter? That would give his presence a little more weight than just "I'm here and I haven't killed you... yet."

Also, it'd be nice to know what I was supposed to be doing to stop this Shadow Dragon before I clicked "accept". Am I breaking up a sacrifice or disrupting a ritual arrangement or putting the metaphysical equivalent of a bag of flaming dog poo on his doorstep?

I'm... going to get some kind of mystic fang to poison a "seal of madness".

That's a distressingly large number of proper nouns in the sendoff all told. Maybe just limit them to what I need to know for the first mission.

When I bug my contact he tells me that the Lords of Madness are also looking for the fang so they can weaken the seals, which would have been nice to know setting out.

Also, you don't need multiple patrols saying the same thing to make sure they're heard. NPC text is like full-radius broadcast now.

I confront a "death fang" DB/ninja who takes a few of my attacks and then heads for the hills. I figure it's the AI not liking the knockdown and slows and let him head off, but nope, dude did a runner. Completely silent to boot.

Stheno goes down pretty steadily. She calls for help at half health but nothing seems to show up, which is a shame as I really needed the defense to dodge her death scream.

And with her down, I... have to break open a cocoon in a completely different part of the map to get this fang.

I get a clue for grabbing it and a mission-ending clue, both of which say pretty much the same thing. You should only bother with one of them.

---

"Legion tells" in the next briefing should probably be "legend tells". Though exactly why the actual fang isn't enough to stop these guys I don't know. It was still in its tamper-evident packaging and everything.

Also, the Circle and the Mu fought way more than just a thousand years ago. The seal would have been broken for a while.

A bit tough to carry an entire tomb around. Maybe it's one of those metaphorical ones. ...or a tome.

The mission description is asking me to drop some guys I've never heard of, and that's without even getting into the mission. If they weren't mentioned in the briefing they should show up in the navbar.

...an arch-mage of death. Ay yi yi. Those guys aren't any fun to throw down with. They're like elite bosses except with a lot more hit points.

At about 1/4 health (the Shivan helps) the map fills up with battles of the new group vs. CoT. (The minions have no description.)

The CoT seem to be knockin' em down pretty handily, as I only find one group of survivors.

I break the last obelisk and retrieve the... yes, it should probably be a tomE. (The navbar thinks it's a "portal of shadows".)

And I still have a boss to beat. He goes through the usual boss spiel -- he's invincible, I can't beat him, his boss will get me anyway, blah blah blah.

---

My contact is so excited about the goings-on that he can't bring himself to use paragraph breaks at all.

Good lord this is a wall of text.

I don't think he should suddenly come to the realization in the briefing as such? But having him detail the Tsoo mythology of the Banished Pantheon (using different names) and then reveal that we know what he's been talking about all along.

The Banished Pantheon are explicitly trying to "wake the Sleeper" in Dark Astoria. The Tsoo would know this as they've been fighting around there. So having that alternate explanation pop up doesn't make a lick of sense.

And a throwdown with Adamastor! He drops pretty easy without his giant monster resists. And then it's time to hunt around on an outdoor map for a glowie!

Joy.

I manage to find it after a couple loops, and... oh. A surprise boss that I have to take out for no apparent reason.

Sigh. Yeah, you know, it doesn't make much sense to give me a souvenir I picked up from this boss when thanks to the level of dark armor she has she rises from the dead, stunning me and becoming invincible.

Before then it was pretty smooth sailing, though.

Also I don't seem to have a clue for these ashes I picked up. The system text indicates I found them, but that's it.

I have to admit, I don't get what my contact is making all this fuss about. As far as I know, I actually have all the components these guys need to perform their ritual, and now I can just drop 'em into the lava in the Troll Tunnels or something.

---

Storyline - ***. I realize it's traditional at this point to have the heroes go gather up a bunch of MacGuffins only to have defeat snatched from the jaws of victory, but I really have no idea what I'm doing wrong that needs a part two. As far as I understand everything, I have three artifacts, any one of which is essential to performing the terrible ritual, so having all three should make the world double extra safe, right? I can tell my contact's nervous about something, but judging by the clues and system text in the missions there's nothing going wrong. I mean, maybe the Dragons here are, say, stealing the shadows of the ritual components and they can use them like the real things, but I'd like some foreshadowing there.

Design - ***. The ninjas are appropriately ninja. The maps are fairly thematic, but I wonder if it might be possible to put the last one in the "smooth cave" set, if only because hunting for a glowie on an outdoor map is a bit of a pain. Also, there are multiple patrols saying the same thing in the first mission and like ten battles in the second mission that all say the same thing as well. I'd really recommend using one talky element and N silent ones.

Gameplay - **. Whittling down an ArchDeathMage's hit point/resistance combo is a colossal pain, too. And as always with customs, Build Up is a bit much to handle, and Soul Transfer is just a kick in the dangly bits after I've supposedly dropped a boss and taken a trophy.

Detail - **. The Dragon EB in the first mission is completely silent, even when he cuts and runs, and it looks like the minions don't have any bio on 'em. I also don't actually get a clue for the ashes in the last mission. But even aside from that, there are some problems with revealing the setting. I can tell you have a pretty intricate picture of what's actually going on here, but having the contact just kind of spit out details even if they're not relevant yet is just a bit of an overload, and makes it hard to tell what's really important. Generally people can understand things better if they've got something to hang 'em on, so spelling out the whole ritual right at the start just results in it getting tossed down the memory hole.

Overall - ***. A few power tweaks and a little more attention paid to the "part-1-relevant" aspects of the story would go a long way towards making this better.

Man, weekends have been a total loss for me lately.

Anyway, kickin' off a Monday with Shadow of the Dragoness, Part 1 (319165). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

In my experience, Carnies (and Vahz, and Clockwork, and Lost, and Rikti) are heavier on bosses naturally, and Council are lighter. I was seeing this behavior back in I15, mostly for custom groups put in the MA. Enemy groups seem to have their own boss-vs-other balance even before difficulty settings are taken into account.

@GlaziusF

Playing this on a low 40s ice/axe tank. All bosses, no AVs, 2 heroes at +0.

---

Hmm.

Okay, two things about this sendoff.

First, those two paragraphs you got in the intro need a double space between 'em.

Second, it sounds like you're trying to write Verbose Crimson doing the briefing but you're not really comfortable with all the redirection-type stuff he usually works into his speeches:

"i can see the look on your face... it might seem unethical to attack preemptively to you. Trust me when I say there's nothing preemptive about it. This agent, Moment... his first big operation is going underway now."

If you can't write Verbose Crimson, Punchy Crimson is just as good. For example:

"Worried about drawing first blood? Don't be, because you won't be. This 'Moment' is already making his move."

Anyway, let's hit the base.

Okay, two things.

First, haha there's a little Kronos in the loading-screen shot of this place.

Second, not everybody has played this map and knows you can actually enter the base proper. You might want to mention that, somehow.

...huh. A Zeus Titan named "Joel"? I know they're made of people, but usually they're named after their operation function with an addendum afterward. "Hanger Defense Unit 04" or whatever.

"Operation Engineer: We have an MHI intruding on the premises!" And he's after your PIN numbers, right? (MHI = MetaHuman Incursion, which by default is intruding)

Ah. A laptop taken off-network. ...I guess that's intel enough? No clue about what's actually on it.

The boss here is "Delta 5-Niner", and while Malta often depart from the pattern of two NATO letters number-number-number, there isn't supposed to be anything special about this place so he should probably be standard. "Delta Tango 5-5-5" or something.

So. Crimson. What on this thing?

Wait, what? Moment's infiltrated Longbow? When did I learn that?

Calling out the Orestes Rifle also seems a bit weird. Maybe it's a nod to canon, but Crimson shoots the idea down in the next sentence, so it seems weird to have it there at all.

---

Another briefing that needs twin paragraph breaks in it.

We... know where Moment is? Okay, I guess. But how does Crimson know about his capabilities? We learned about them in World Wide Red, but given that this is supposed to be "Moment's first operation" and WWR was about Malta trying to push China and US to the brink of war, his exact powers should still be a bit of a mystery.

Okay, Crimson tells us where Moment is in the mission sendoff, which is alright.

Wait, what, entry popup? I'm looking forward to de-smugging Longbow?

I mean, okay, there are a couple ops in the RWZ who have a bit of a swelled head, but the Longbow working in Faultline (including Crimson's protege) don't have much of a superiority complex to speak of.

Ah, patrols with identical dialogue. Don't worry about it getting missed, there's a giant NPC talk radius now. If you want patrols, one talky and a bunch of silents will do fine.

...man. He runs at 75%? And with the Ballista repulsion field up, and the ambush assisting him, he's nearly impossible to whittle down by the time he hits the mission door. I managed to get him down to 5% but I was tapped dry of endurance by the time he made it out.

Especially if the sapper knocks off your defense toggles and you get blown 500 feet.

...but he was trying to steal "Ballista armor"? Ballistas are like hyper-wardens, and wardens are basically induced mutations. It's not the armor that makes Ballistas special, it's the power cocktail.

And Moment can't copy that, since he can't maintain a shapeshift form long-term without revisiting the original template, so reverse-engineering would also be impractical.

You know what he could run off with? A prototype cataphract. Put him in either a recolored HVAS or PPD Guardian. If this is prior to World Wide Red, maybe Malta are still engineering the Kronos.

---

So, mission 3 briefing: "unless you can find some other way of stopping Moment, he probably won't be doing any more shapeshifting after this."

...is there a word missing or wrong in there? I have no idea what it means.

Also, Crimson, Malta are probably okay with having Moment so close to them because they've brainwashed him or have his family suspended in a room made out of poison. You know how they operate. You know what they do to metas, you and Indigo have asked me to stop them doing it.

...wait, what? The Ballista Moment copied is wounded like I beat him up? Is this supposed to be an indication of how Moment's powers work or an attempt by Malta to frame me?

Ah. Okay. Moment is a Nictus in a robot suit.

...wait, WHAT?

Moment calls what he does "synchronizing genetics", and there's an eyewitness to his power working - "He clasped my hand and changed shape to look just like me!".

That's not how Nictus transform. It definitely doesn't involve robot suits.

And... that's Moment's big secret.

You know what I wanted to find out? Why this happened: "You notice that much of this blackmail material was dug up by Moment himself. Several pages have hand-written notes in small cursive lettering with funny stories, small details, and humorous sketches of various interesting people Moment met while gathering this information."

But I don't know why this Moment would do that. Heck, I don't know IF this Moment would do that.

---

So after Moment is defeated, I have to go clean up.

Because Malta has copied the Ballista armor.

And it actually is Ballistas with Malta colors.

And I have to fight three of them.

And usually the first thing they do is stick me in a detention field so I get to stare menacingly at them for a minute.

You know, if these are supposed to be unstable prototypes maybe they shouldn't actually be recolored Ballistae, but custom enemies.

(also all the fighting Arachnos means a) the Malta have their gun turrets out, and those are a joy to fight on a Lethal-dependent character, and b) the usual moratorium on Sappers doesn't apply)

Two hours and three Shivans later, the base is finally clear. None of the "special" Malta units even says anything, it's all chatter between the Arachnos and Malta, about half a dozen times, all battle dialogue, all assuming I'm there to kick off the battles when that's just not how battles actually work.

Crimson just makes noises about how the new units failed -- uh, they really didn't. They broke into Arachnos just fine. And all I have to go on to say that they won't use this technology again is that one of the three conjectures Crimson made at the start of the mission was that Malta were... trying to seize an Arachnos production facility or something to make more of them, since they couldn't on their own?

There's nothing in the base or the units or the mission to imply that there will only ever be three Hyperion suits.

And... is there even a souvenir? I think this one may have overflowed my stock of custom souvenirs... no, that was actually the snakeskin.

That's...

Man, why do they keep doing that? I want to keep my custom souvs around!

But it looks like this arc didn't have one.

---

Storyline - *. I have to admit there's a little bit of bias here. I must have played World Wide Red for the first time, what, four years ago? And I still remember the clue about Moment writing funny stories in the margins of his blackmail notes. I guess it was because it stood out so much from the rest of Malta; it seemed human, not the work of some brainwashed simp or hero under duress, but just some guy having a grand old time. Why did he work for Malta? Why did Malta work with him? We never found out. I was hoping I would, now. But nope. Space squid in a robot suit, the end. Stealing Ballista armor (which is not the pertinent part of the Ballista), so the Malta could copy it and... go raid Arachnos to get the resources to make more Ballista armor? It's not really clear. And time-wise, the bulk of my time commitment was to the last mission and its gun turrets and sappers and drawn-out identical silent boss fights. The arc was about Moment, but I spent the most time cleaning up after his schemes while he was in jail.

Design - ***. Needs some kind of independent confirmation in the last mission that these are the last Hyperion suits, that this is a field-test, or something else to back up the idea that Malta won't be using them anymore. Also might be nice to find out why they really DID decide to take on an Arachnos base.

Gameplay - **. Trying to whittle down one Ballista's health as he runs away is a nightmare. I almost made it, except I ran out of endurance, and he shoved me back and ran out the door while I was getting up. Trying to whittle down three Ballistas' health in a mission with dark backgrounds to hide Malta presence, predeployed gun drones, and a high concentration of sappers is just kind of elemental tedium. Find some replacements - if not in the second mission, then at least in the last. If these aren't supposed to be fully-operating Ballista suits, make 'em like energy assault/force field customs.

Detail - **. While my gripes with the storyline are more with the events in it than the way they were presented, the presentation was off for other reasons. Crimson, mostly. He talked in weird, circuitous ways with odd, not-quite-right phrasing. It struck me as an unfamiliarity with the words or the writing style. At least once he told me in the mission briefing that "we" knew something, but seeing it explained in the sendoff text was the first time I'd seen it personally. And because he tossed off conjectures left and right, I have no real reason to believe his assessment of the fate of the Hyperion robots is anything more than another guess.

Overall - **. Again, part of that is because I had actual questions about Moment that this arc didn't attempt to address, let alone answer. But the theft from Longbow doesn't make sense, and even if it did the subsequent invasion of Arachnos is never really explained or explored. Since that's the last mission in this arc it ends on a very uncertain note. To say nothing of what a slog three identical elite bosses are to take down in the last mission.

Well, given that you get XP even when exemped now, she can probably take on "The Bravuran Jobs" (5073). Depending on how low in the 30s she is, she'll probably have her full suite of powers to deal with everything.