GlaziusF

So tonight there's a double feature.

First, several brief comments on "Snake in the Grass" (2610):

• The system thinks it features Legacy Chain. It obviously doesn't, so it's probably an artifact of the updating process. How long ago did you look at this?
• Snakes look like they spawn from 1-52, but there's actually a hole from 35-45 where there aren't any of 'em, and I think anybody in this level range will face level 46 "elder" Snakes.
• It's unfinished. Heck, it's barely even started. Abandoned warehouse map, enemy group Snakes, exit clue: piece of snakeskin. These are all the salient features.
• Yes, there's a briefing. But there's no evidence in the warehouse that the briefing even matters. There's nothing to tie into it. It's just an abandoned warehouse, and we've got yonks of those. But if you're really hard up to figure out how to grow this story, here are some questions: how'd they know the captain was carrying Snakes? How'd they find him to arrest him? Did he hire someone for protection? And what if the city actually decides to hire Arachnos-affiliated exterminators to wipe out the Snakes? How bad could it get before they did that?
• I just used this to get another power on a character who was one bar away from level. Otherwise I would just have turned around. There are a whole bunch of actual stories out there, so why should I bother playing a tiny little stub of an idea?

This is the last arc I have from this author, and I'm glad to be done with them. They all felt like early prototypes that got published so the author could get tickets for testing them. And you know, that's fine. Sometimes you want to see if your inspiration tray refills at a reasonable rate depending on how taxing your arc is, as well.

But why bother promoting them, or putting them on CoHMR? Hoping for a random stranger with a giant pile of ideas, but no story to put them in, to give you a hand? That's about like walking out into the wilderness, digging a three-inch hole, and waiting for some random stranger with a pile of money to pass by and be so taken by the start you've made that he builds you a skyscraper.

I'll admit, there really isn't a place for people to come together and brainstorm stories or work through plot points or suggest flavorful details or anything like that. Maybe someone who feels like tending to a thread where that sort of stuff happens should start one.

But this is a mission review thread. I expect to be playing a completed mission arc, without placeholders or dummy text or dummy enemies, that the author has playtested at least once and seen that it works as they intended it to.

And with those lofty expectations in mind, I'm playing Glory of Moment (328789). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.

@GlaziusF

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

---

I gotta say, I don't exactly believe the Prince of Lies here. I mean, isn't treason against God like the worst thing you can pull off? Won't that make things worse, instead of better?

Anyway, time to claw my way out of a grave in Purgatory and watch out for a guy with a cuisinart on his arm.

Okay. First, the First Sphere description calls them "the Fist Sphere". Second... uh, I don't know if you realized this, but Rise of the Phoenix (which both spheres thus far have) is a powerful AOE knockback and stun which gives its caster a long non-obvious period of untouchability. And it's not like the Freak rez that only goes off sometimes - this one goes off ALL the time.

Yeah, Third Spheres self-rez too.

Oh, there's an archangel here. Looks like fire control/willpower. Blessedly, he has no resurgence.

I find a mystical portal called only "The Answer" with no system interaction text.

Apparently it's God's entire invasion plan.

Somehow.

And it's halfway through the mission, with at least four rooms left to go.

But you know? I'm tired of being knocked around and unable to touch the guys that did it for an unspecified period of time, so I'll click that exit button.

---

Okay, I have to give you credit for this one. Good will always triumph because Evil backstabs itself.

But... defeat all? Defeat all on an outdoor map?

...okay, it's a tiny outdoor map.

With a Snake fight! Although the Snakes are talking like there's someone come to join the battle, which hasn't happened in ever.

Still. Defeat All is really Defeat All Twice here, so that's a pain.

---

Okay, so some fallen angel has an anti-God weapon somewhere and I go spring him to find out what it is. I was going to suggest you use "Fallen From Grace" since they added in Safeguard villains recently... but it turns out this "Dark Sabaoth" guy is ALSO a Rogue Isles Villain and a fallen angel.

Man, what the hell. They even share a level range.

Longbow are such a relief to fight. They don't explode and knock me all over the place.

Hmm. This map has a prison with reinforced doors in it. Obviously the "open the doors" isn't going to be completed when they break, but certainly someone might try it.

Ah, that's how you open the doors. The computer has a reasonable description, but it's just labeled "cells". I don't think this is accurate unless the cells are extremely, extremely tiny.

So I spring DS, and a spawn of enemies appears around me. I'm a bit too busy dealing with them to notice the walls of text, and by the time I realize that that was actually the boss spawn with "Agent Crimson" (who bears a striking resemblance to Indigo) in it, DS has been shredded within an inch of his life, and I can't pull enough aggro to prevent that last inch from vanishing down the chipper.

Since I'm leading DS to the exit anyway, could you put the boss up front?

---

Oh well. Time to kill bAEbies.

Hmm. The main mission group is PPD, but the heroes are escorted by Longbow.

You may have wanted this to happen, it helps them stand out.

Oh! Not ALL of them are escorted by Longbow. There's an EB here who's got PPD with him. ...and if he's stone armor, he didn't put anything on. Also he fought with super strength. I guess that's part of the... joke, such as it is?

I have to say, this whole thing feels really off-tone. I can buy attacking greedy or otherwise viceful heroes, but when they're pastiches of certain metagame styles (idle LFTer, RPist, canon copy, clueless "theorycrafter") that just seems fake.

Not that I mind his absence, but where was Lord Darkity Dark Dark of Darkness in all this? You'd think he'd be first on the chopping block.

---

Gabriel, Angel of Death, huh? You blow one Last Trump...

Classical Judaism has Samael, who separates the soul from man. Later in the Catholic tradition, Michael functioned as sort of a "good angel of death", but he's already popped up in mission 1 so reuse probably isn't an option.

"2 Defeat Gabriel, the Angel of Death"? Hoo boy.

And there's no minimap out here! Double hoo boy!

Gabriel exhibits a distinct lack of Last Trumping and a whole lot of darkity dark dark.

Seriously, dude. Samael.

So I drop one Gabriel. He Soul Transfer/Dark Consumption/Siphon Lifes himself, and for a moment I think this is what the 2 means.

Buuut no. Just down the beach is another one calling out for the minions of Arachnos to come out and diiieeeee.

He goes down. And ST/DC/SL and down again. (it's full XP even though he comes back with just a sliver of health, so, uh, small favors I guess?)

And there's still an objective to defeat him. This is a level beyond double hoo boy. I call it "Hoo boy 3".

Okay, judging from his dialogue, this is apparently "form 2" of Gabriel, and form 3, which was supposed to chain off it, spawned in when the map loaded and I fought him first.

That explains why the system text when I dropped the "first Gabriel" said I'd backed him off for good.

...oh, come on. The "orders from God" which I retrieved in the first mission were all a plant from Satan? Nice job breaking the ranks of the angels, villain?

Dude. I'm PURE EVIL. If you were all "hey broski we're gonna tweak God's nose here's some fake orders go plant 'em in Purgatory" I would have been on that like white on rice.

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Storyline - *. I just fought six Extreme DM/Extreme DA elite bosses. Yes, technically there were three of them but THEY ALL REZZED AND HEALED THEMSELVES RIGHT AFTER. And when I get back to my contact he laughs at me for being a chump. Really ends things on a high note. The metagame characters in the fourth mission feel out-of-place in an arc that the other characters I encounter are taking seriously. If you want to put "heroes" in suffering from, say, Wrath, Greed, Pride, and Envy that'd work fine. Maybe recolor some villain models - Greed is a Malta Tac Ops, Pride is a PPD Peacebringer boss, Envy is a Dark Ring Mistress, Wrath is a Vanguard robot... something along those lines. Frees up the file space too.

Design - *. The angel design is pretty nice. All one of it, not counting Mike and Gabe. Needs some variety in costuming so as to distinguish among the various types. Maybe just accent colors on the sleeves and pants. But the powers... good lord. Everything has Rise of the Phoenix. Everything. Except Mike, who stays down, and Gabe, who has Soul Transfer, which actually stuns through my defenses, unlike Rise, which just knocks me back forever. And both those rezzes have an untouchable period without an obvious trigger for it to fall off. If you free up space in mission 4, maybe just add two identical minions and one identical lieutenant and boss who just don't self-rez, so as to cut down on the number of times it happens. And then there's the matter of the AV spawning right exactly over my ally in mission 3. That was a fun surprise when I finally figured out what was going on.

Gameplay - *. Every mission with the angels in it was a slog. Drop one, get blown back 20 feet, stand up, try and pick out which of the identical white mass had just gotten up and wouldn't be damageable for the next 20 seconds... every. single. time. And then there was the last mission, which contained both an outdoor map without a minimap on, so I didn't know where I'd been, and three/six absolutely identical boss fights.

Detail - *. Agent "Crimson" is pretty obviously Indigo. The clickie in the first mission doesn't even have any text describing what I'm doing to get these invasion plans for Earth. I'm pretty sure you got Gabriel's exact flavor of death wrong, though there are darkity dark dark angels to be had. And Satan revealing he's lying at the end is just a brick to the head outta nowhere that didn't even have to BE there.

Overall - *. Esc, I gotta ask, is this another mistakenly uploaded version? Agent "Crimson"'s location on the map and actual identity, and the broken chain of bosses at the end, are things that should've been caught in test. The customs are a real annoyance to actually put down for the count, and the arc ends in a giant soul-sapping sextuple boss fight on a mapless outdoor map, followed by a tossed-off narrative gut punch.

So after a modest hiatus to tighten up the graphics on level 3, I mean work on my own arcs, I bring you:

The Fight Of Angels (329420). Verdict - *. Review below in this thread.

Well, "Bricked Electronics" is good from 8-20, "Dream Paper" is more of a 15-20 arc though you can do it earlier since I think you pick up Practiced Brawler at 10, and if you don't mind doing villain arcs in AE, "The Bravuran Jobs" is 20-30 and "Backwards Day" is 25-30.

@GlaziusF

Running this as a DB/fire brute in the mid-40s, 2 villains +1 level all bosses no AVs.

Man, is there some interesting shorthand somebody's developed for that?

Anyway.

---

Huh. Okay. Looks like I get to confront my inner demons. ...or, y'know, laugh maniacally with them.

Sup dawg I heard you like streamlined cars so I took all your car parts.

While I enjoy humorous accept text as much as the next dude, it deprives anybody else reading the mission of the amusing segue. I'd suggest putting it into the mission briefing in pale green and using a more objectively written accept text.

The customs look like MA/pipe wrench minions with MA/merc lieutenants and bosses. Thematically consistent, but the MA seems kinda weird. I guess it's supposed to be dance-fighting?

Anyway, no defensive powers means they're wheat before the scythe here.

A couple of patrols talk about infiltrating the gang and being thoroughly skeeved out at the "colors", such as they are. And there are some Malta chillin' in the main garage. The big bosses generally have number-number-number designations, so calling this guy Star Platinum 10-1-5 or something would fit the Malta naming scheme.

Anyway, time for a little Magician's Red.

Hmm. The boss clue shows up when I pop the turret - you should probably tie it just to the boss. Also Malta are unnaturally fond of using "MHI" for "metahuman incursion" to describe a super showing up somewhere they ought not be.

Titan project! There's a bad angle to be on the receiving end of.

---

So a prominent Paragon politician is actually a lizardman. I'm well-acquainted with conspiracy theories, but I find it a little hard to buy that I can look at a Malta hard drive and figure out the secret identity of one of their conspirators.

I thought they were a little more paranoid than that.

But okay, let's go a kidnap.

Meteor Atlas? I thought there was another Atlas Park outdoor map that worked alright, or does it not have any spots for captives?

Reporters interviewing cops. That's pretty nice. ...but is thiis a custom group of PPD? Because I'm seeing a lot of grey hardsuits and suchlike kicking around, and that seems to be what I16 does to custom groups with any kind of level range. You can just use the PPD random spawner, and it should work out fine.

I have a look around at the bios of the supergroup that's shows up to work security. Them and the protestors are a pretty welcome touch, but for some reason the optional bosses vanish from the navbar as soon as I spring the lizardman.

Oh! This is an interesting way to take this.

---

Yeah, when the contact's inside your head you can set yourself up in all kinds of crazy situations. I'll bet this is the Darque map.

Bingo!

Okay, time to get moving. Lots of random cars and trucks lying about to blow up, which is welcome.

Not so welcome - the lady Longbow Flamethrower who the councilman addresses as "Steve". (Have you got space? You can do a passable recolor of the Malta in Longbow red and white.)

Unfortunately the Titan ambush spawns down in the streets below, and I can trot back to the van without it getting in my way. Well, unfortunately for the ambush, anyway.

---

Ah, time for a sidelight to gram some kaboominite. It's part of your complete breakfast!

Huh. This "Crey Security" seems to cap at 45 and be rather anemic on XP - are there any bosses in it?

Also glowies do this thing where "Back" actually means "Middle" and "Middle" actually means back, so the safe with the stuff is right around the corner from the entrance. I didn't even need to fight anything, but I bounced around anyway to see if there was anything like an interesting security chief No dice.

Oh! So that was a deliberate first link in a chain! Man, I feel silly now. I did think the last room looked a bit empty.

Gasp! International playboy and man about town Roger Warp is secretly Justice Squad high-flyer Warp Drive! Grav/energy, though I figured him for more of a tank based on his bio.

...and the Malta show up when I drop him? Uh... why, exactly? Just coincidence?

Also for some reason the mission exit popup and return text are identical. "You escaped with the explosives, now for the final phase of your nefarious plan."

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Huh. Jump on a boat? Is this the Warburg hangar?

...no. It's the Faultline building?

What?

This place is pretty much pre-bombed for my convenience.

I hear Chameleon ranting as I step inside, then I realize he must have been OUTside after the first floor comes up empty.

...huh. No, it doesn't look like he's outside either.

Well, time to get on with things. Eagle decides to try and defeat me to escape, and he's got a pretty keen costume but his MA/Shield is just a little too weak to stand up to me.

You can make glowies that fade in now. Whether you want to do that to these tiny dynamite packs is up to you.

So there's this giant robot that's trying to remember what it used to be. I think I will call it a Stand, because it's standing there in the middle of the room.

The boss is a stock Gunslinger like Star Platinum was. I don't know why the mission was warning me to bring friends, he was pretty easy with a giant mechanical distraction to draw fire from the ambush.

...and I find a Malta org chart just lying around on a computer. Really?

Really?

That's the second vital piece of intel on these guys that I just kinda haphazardly picked up.

The souvenir talks about people having their homes destroyed in some ensuing flood, but, uh, the north, inhabited, end of Faultline is about 20 stories up from where that building is. Must have been a hell of a flood.

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Storyline - ***. So why was I in Faultline again? The run-up to mission 2 talks about some secret bunker underneath a public park, but the south part of Faultline is about as far away from "public park" as you can get. Also, how does Chameleon get out of my secret lair to menace me in the fifth mission? Turn into a fly or something? (I'd probably get an answer on this if I actually fought him but I explored all around that map and couldn't find him anywhere.)

Design - *****. Pretty sure the cops in mission 2 are a bug. Pretty sure the Crey in mission 3 are working as intended. But mission 2 was just such a nice press-conference kind of feel, and the rest of the arc is at least passably realized, so this is a kind of "6 - 1 = 5" thing.

Gameplay - ****. Carving through blue Crey for half XP, on the other hand, is a modest sort of downer. I realize Crey get kind of monolithic above 45, so why not just set the arc 40-45 and use stock Crey? It's not like 50s will lose any powers now, and they'll still get XP to boot.

Detail - **. So apparently Indigo and Crimson were doing it wrong this entire time. You don't need civilians on the inside. You don't need to try to work your way into some decent piece of information by torturously prying open the shell around Malta with a tiny sliver of intelligence. You don't need to decipher codes or piece together clues or anything like that. You can just walk into a Malta base, tap a random computer, and you'll get everything you need to know about who Malta is, what their plans are, and how they operate. This isn't to say that any of what I found was wrong or misleading or contradictory. Far from it. But... why did I find it at all? Malta don't even show up as a main-mission enemy group until the last mission, which is great, but why is all this vital information about them just kind of left there for me to find? This is supposed to be an intro, there's room to leave stuff unknown. I have no problem with finding a link to a city councilman in mission 1, but that's all I really need to go on. Consider this: On the computer in mission 1 I just find the dude's name, and maybe the rally he's attending (that you might be able to site in actual park-like surroundings). So he's got this odd habit of hissing, and when my back's turned after mission 3 he just up and vanishes. But I know there's something in the park so I arm up in mission 4 and go down into the bunker (maybe a 5th/council cave?) in mission 5, and find the city councilman who's now trying to claw my face off and spit poison down my neck., along with some heavily redacted information that indicates these guys are one cell among many, and they're working with military-spec gear that you need serious connections to get your hands on. Maybe drop some vague hints about Malta scouting me for the Titan project too - I rather liked those - but don't just spell out what they are in the last mission.

Overall - ***. Probably a pretty good arc when it launched, but with I16 some aspects of it need a second look. I don't need to know anything that I found out about Malta to actually see this arc through, and while I'd applaud the extra incidental detail in a lot of cases, it really feels wrong when it's coming from the secret multinational paramilitary organization.

Tonight's arc comes from the randomizer: Might Makes Right: The One With Tin Hats (5213). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

@GlaziusF

Giving this a run on a high-30s ice/sonic controller, 1 hero +1 level all bosses no AVs.

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Okay, so I've gone back in time to the Rikti War and Crey are just starting to move and shake. Let's see, let's see.

...aw, man, not this again. I'm seeing orange minions and blue lieutenants. (level 38, seeing level 36 "elite agent" lieuts.)

I appreciate that this is probably to eliminate the Crey tanks from this custom group.

Oh hey! Custom security "elite troops"... which are minions. Were they supposed to be lieutenants? That'd make more sense.

I face off against an office manager with a katana and then open the safe. Gasp! It's the Masse Kernels!

Or, uh, whatever it was I came for.

---

Okay, apparently they're just printouts of this guy's proof that Crey lifted stuff from the RIkti.

And now I'm going to get some captured tech. Uh... any hints as to what I'm looking for here, guy? Rikti alloys? Plasma weapons? Shift?

Wow, and there are Plasma and Cryo scientists, who topped out in the low low 30s. I'm betting this is the gap lieutenants were intended to cover.

Hmm. Looks like the crates have their default descriptors, which isn't all bad as they make sense. I guess there was glowing green metal in both of 'em as I don't get a clue for the second.

You know, it'd really suck if there was legitimate research here going on under epsilon clearance or something.

---

Oh, they're getting away with a dude. ...man. I don't know if I'll have to escort this guy so I get to path-clearin'. Seems like an awful lot of Crey stick around the battle sites. That just might be the +perception on the willpower bringing in adds.

I kind of appreciate the desire to give the Rikti a weird "language", but the extended character set arrangement you picked isn't quite doin' it for me. Try making some stuff out of the characters that are used for line art.

There's a lot of fighting going on, and... well, good thing I was wrecking dudes on the way in, as it is an escort out.

---

And one more piece, where I can cry for help if I need it.

Oh! Here's some elite lieutenant customs, finally! Did the enemy group change for this map, or did I just get lucky? A plasma and a cryo, who make enough sense but should maybe have some power gloves or something.

...huh, and it's back to the green and gray lieutenants. This is bizarre.

I look up my buddy, who has a suspiciously similar build to my contact... and for some reason this mission seems awfully familiar despite its ID number in the 300,000s.

One patrol on the top floor talks about Hopkins, one about Samuels, and it sounds from Samuels' description like he's the big cheese of Crey Security at the present time. Incomplete revision?

Anyway, now that we have a complete collection of evidence Crey has to back off from their research for some reason. And that's it.

---

Storyline - ***. This is missing something that's my favorite part of Crey arcs - consequences. I mean, this is a raid on a company that's doing emergency defense research to try and devise a way to combat the invaders - or at least that's the public face, anyway. But it never gets beyond just Crey. Nobody else seems to mind that we're in their base killing their mans. Sure, they'd be guarding the same facilities that Crey holds their research in, but one thing Crey is very good at is saying "don't look over here".

Design - ****. I do wonder if your customs got downshifted somehow. Crey has plenty of non-power-suited minions up until the 45 range, so introducing elite versions of the minions as lieutenants (which would make the cryo/plasma guys into bosses) makes more sense than somebody coming in at 30 and seeing a special agent vigilant leading a squad of elites. But since it's happened twice in a row now I'm not marking off for somehow having greys show up. It's apparent that something funky is going on with the enemy generator such that it tosses up greys when there are valid entries in the appropriate level range.

Gameplay - ****. Minimal backtracking, and where it happens does make sense, but the cargo ship's always a bit frustrating to work through just because of the giant open spaces and large crowds (even before you throw in the battles). The end boss went down in a modest amount of time but I definitely needed the help for it.

Detail - ****. The Rikti need to talk less like a corrupted database entry. Line-art unicode starts around 0x2500, so find some of that and airlift it in. Also, the custom Crey need a little more in the way of descriptions. They get the point across, but I'm really curious why Crey moved away from these models and into the tank paradigm.

Overall - ****. A solid effort, but it could do with a bit of a twist in the story and a little more polish here and there.

"Bricked Electronics" is a good 10-15 arc, and "Dream Paper" should work alright from 15-20.

@GlaziusF

Playing this on a mid-40s earth/emp controller, 1 hero +1 level all bosses no AVs.

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Huh. You know, somehow saying "this is a pirate signal in the MA" doesn't really work so much as just making the plea for help. I mean, everything's all equally unreal here.

So there are Midnight Squad, some Arachnos, and some Legacy Chain running around here.

...aaaaand none of them are actually in my level range so I get a giant pile of greys. What the sprout?

Oh, there's Wyvern and Longbow too.

Huh. Okay, there's some Arachnos here that are actually in level range but there's also a scattering of weird grays.

...and some PPD in level range as well. What the what now.

So this was all a weird alternate universe... why should it be applicable to this one, ex nihilo? I mean, maybe these were the guys who were planning to destroy the multiverse or something.

---

But okay, let's ride the plot train over to the Rogue Isles.

Abandoned lab, okay... oh, and some Vanguard in this alliance too.

Clicking the tapes (a fast clicky with no interaction or system text) summons a boss... dark blast/invuln? Okay.

---

So I go over to the guy who's gonna analyze these tapes, and... it's Snakes.

You should be aware these guys have a giant level range where there's a dead space and they'll either be mega gray or mega purple.

These are apparently not the actual Snake snakes, they're just hyperintelligent snakes created by MAD mad mad SCIENCE science science.

So... what's on these tapes? I should apparently know but I guess I'll have to wait for Esc to tell me.

(Also it's really weird to read about these guys as "cleans" and "dirties". Sounds like a detergent-sponsored version of shirts vs. skins.)

---

Okay, how do logs of the attack give us a clue to the next target? That'd be interesting to know.

Esc says I go in first but when I get in I find him held captive.

Huh. There's 60's Arachnos in with these guys? (they're the 25-33 version of Arachnos)

Hang on. We're getting information from the Alliance but there are Handprints here? I thought we were raiding a base.

...what is this place we're in, anyway?

So I beat Mynx and Kalinda... and the end mission clue seems to think Kalinda was Hequat, or something.

So apparently if the Handprints ever team up they'll enslave the world and slaughter the hell out of everybody. And this alliance is devoted to stopping them. By slaughtering the hell out of them wherever they show up.

Okay, that's a little extreme, but it's not like I can't sympathize.

---

So now the Handprints are going to unite and destroy the Alliance! And this time it'll work, even though the Alliance punched their clocks the first time around and the Handprints are at greatly diminished fighting strength!

And they'll become exactly what the Alliance feared!

...I don't know if that's intentional or not. Esc doesn't appear to notice, or in fact care.

So this is some solo allies scattered all around the map, versus... the Freedom Phalanx, the Vindicators, and Arachnos. Large portions of all of the above, at any rate. Feels like a giant game of whack-a-mole, really. One takes damage, another pops up, another pops up, three more pop up...

I'm running all over the map here, and I must cross this thing half a dozen times, mostly because this map has a giant multi-pronged middle and I ping-pong between the various ends of it.

Having three elite bosses following me around makes quick work of the one elite boss at a time I end up fighting. Several lieutenant allies die as a result of splash damage. None of the losses really adversely affect my ability to get stunned by the alpha strike and recover in enough time to maybe peg a boss twice before it goes off to that great memory register in the sky.

Pretty much everybody just goes down with versions of the same spiel. You don't know what you're doing, how can this be, do you realize who I am, etc.

But... I really don't know what I'm doing.

I mean, there's probably another universe out there where the Handprints have wrecked the place and are now ready to start taking a hammer to the timestream.

---

Storyline - **. You know, you could have broken off mission 5, called this thing The Alliance - Part 1, and it would have been okay. But my reaction on learning why the Alliance is doing all this is more along the lines of "we must learn to understand this creature" than going alongside Esc and his merry band to wipe them out of existence. I mean, I can definitely buy the "freedom fighters" from one world in the multiverse deciding to stomp out the seeds of their own personal tyranny wherever, and the nature of the opposition is a nice, climactic reveal that could set up a more involved second half than "base invaded, everyone dies".

Design - ***. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that the custom group deciding to "go grey" is a new bug introduced with I16 or even the latest patch. They do represent an alliance pretty well, and the last mission is somewhat of an appropriate slugfest, with the boss monsters popping in spread out enough so that I don't get three at a time breathing down my neck. But the Snake mission is going to present a problem if the levels aren't restricted, as they currently aren't, and the whole arc seems like it should be set at 45-50 because of the epic scale of everything going on here.

Gameplay - **. That last mission. I meant it when I said I could get stunned by the opening salvo and wake up in time to win. I don't think I even managed that with Numina. The waking up, that is. Couple that with the walking back and forth and forth and back and back and forth and forth and back and the nice LADY and it makes me feel like some kind of bizarre shepherd.

Detail - **. Clean writing here, what there is of it, but there really isn't the justification for part 5 that I'd like there to be. Also, mission 4 is lacking in several ways. I don't know how the tapes from mission 2 actually led us to this place, I don't know where "this place" actually is to begin with, and the final clue seems to come from Hequat, played here by Dame Not Appearing In This Mission.

Overall - **. There's one thing you can do to greatly improve this arc. ...well, maybe two things, the second one being find out what's going on to pull a giant pile of greys out of your custom group and make it stop. If you can actually snap off the last mission and create an arc about hitting the Alliance where they live, or trying to negotiate a truce, or whatever, that'd probably have a lot less of a "whack-a-mole while herding superpowered sheep" feel to it, since the confrontations themselves could be spaced out and you could use the same supporting cast but deal them out over the course of multiple missions a couple at a time.

@GlaziusF

Testing this one's lowbie chops on a level 12 BS/shield scrapper. Default difficulty (one hero even-level, no bosses or AVs).

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Okay. While this mission is not quite the pain it might have bee before I16 (I can use powers up to level 6 now!) there's one very, very important thing you need to know about the Contaminated:

They never give experience or drop inspirations, enhancements, or salvage of any kind, ever. This means no MA tickets either.

I'd recommend making a custom group out of the Infected (a villainside equivalent, running from 1-10) and tweaking the names and bios appropriately. They're not significantly different from the Contaminated, but they actually drop rewards of some kind.

Speaking of, it'd be nice to find something in the sewer about how the Infected got there, or hear them talking about... well... anything (they're quite vocal in Outbreak) or see them tangling with the usual assortment of sewer-levels or a random hero who got separated from his sewer team, or... well, anything.

...also if that's supposed to be Dr. Miller from the tutorial he's not a little old lady.

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Okay, advanced Infected. So how do these guys hold up?

Weird blue and green-colored skin. Hmm. And there's a lieut who looks like a Troll, a lady lieut mind-controller with pain backup, And among the minions there's Macebatman, the obligatory claw girl (with some empathy), a gunner (who seems to be missing a description), and a... dual grav/mind controller?!

Whoa whoa whoa, brakes brakes brakes. Here's what control powers single-digit heroes generally contend with from the Lost, probably the faction you should be taking as your inspiration here: a percentage chance for a short-duration stun from the lieutenants, and a sleep or area immobilize from the bosses. Holds are right out not just from the Lost but in general, at least until the mid-teens when the melees have status protection.

Also, elite bosses in a group don't show up unless you specifically spawn them in as a boss detail, and this is another mission with no details at all, aside from the defeat all.

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Storyline - *. The progression of the story runs counter to what I did - I contained an outbreak of Outbreak, but not only did the Contaminated get INTO the city, they got more powerful. And there's never an indication of how the Contaminated are developing into these more powerful forms.

Design - *. If this IS supposed to be an arc for single-digit heroes, the control powers are decidedly inappropriate for the customs to have. Also if you actually WANT the EB to pop out, he needs to be set as a boss detail -- and the arc could really use some detailing in general. Also, and I can't stress this enough, the first mission should really have enemies that actually give some kind of reward.

Gameplay - **. Chugging through a sewer crawl with a limited selection of powers for the grand prize of NOTHING! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! isn't a happy way to start my MA day.

Detail - **. There's not much to look at in general. Most of the custom enemies have a description that at least tries to explain their powers, but the lack of any kind of supporting detail in the missions really hurts.

Overall - *. Drop some details in the missions that aren't defeat alls and might actually explain what the heck is going on here. Strip out the controls from the customs if this is really a single-digit target level arc, maybe replacing them with a blaster manipulation set. And give half the arc some freaking XP.

So since I've been too busy to run this for the last 3 days, tonight is a night for 3 arcs:

• Tainted Waters (69315). Verdict - *. Review lower in this thread.
• The Alliance (32661). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.
• Leaving Crey (301947). Verdict - ****. Review lower in this thread.