GlaziusF

So it looks like weekends are when I go to sleep early, to catch up from the weekdays. Gonna need to block out time, gonna need to block out time.

With tonight's arc:

Psychophage (283197). Verdict - ****. No, really. I was surprised too. Review on MA Forums Thread.

I am out of arcs except for stuff kicking around from Escalus. So it looks like random stuff from CoHMR for the next little while.

@GlaziusF

Alright, time for some schlock. This one's getting attacked on my spine/regen scrapper, level 49, diff 2, plenty of break frees.

So, are you expecting a low ranking here? I hope I can deliver.

---

Hmm. Seemingly innocuous items rigged with heinous traps. ...I think I'll spring all of them.

You know, it may just be because I saw MA custom minions in their raw, formative years, but these guys are pretty much typical of that time.

I mean, I can tell you're trying to be annoying here, with rad blasts, and broadsword buildup, and dark blasts from a ninja, but ninjutsu isn't broken anymore. Anguishing Cry is a nice throwback, too.

(also I'll say what I said about enigma silver - the flight on the robot guy seems to keep him from summoning robots)

The non-required glowies do spring a trap, as I was warned they would, aaaaand on hitting the regular one it looks like I'm headed on some kind of crazy head trip. Gotta be murder on those maintenance techs, though.

Oh yeah, the boss also has Atomic Blast on him, like all bosses used to I think. He opens with it. Don't they all.

Hmm. Why do I feel like I just walked into Ninja Scroll?

---

Ahahah. So did you max out this map on patrols? Whatever it is, the boss wound up right frickin' next to the console he was supposed to be guarding, so that's a bit of hilarious.

Getting jumped by dark/rad blasters out of the rafters is its own little breed of fun, too.

No clues about the anti-agent or the flash drive I received. Deliberately bad or just oversight?

---

...hospital administrative wing? You're not going to toss me into the asylum for no adequately described reason?

And this security chief is talkin' all mind-controlled. I guess that's why the "defeat the instigator" clue shows up, but it'd be nice to get a clue from him. Something about drool in the helmet or something.

Also be nice to get some actual interaction time on that laptop.

Oh. It was all aliens. Of course.

Wow, these guys are even more of a pain. Energy aura, psychic shockwave, a little unstoppable on the boss -- surprised he's not raging.

---

And I open up the first door in the lab to find an alien battlemaster staring me in the face. DB/energy, and I'm surprised he doesn't have Overload or call for help.

...oh right, they're all over the place. And the mission is defeat all.

...but you know what? I don't think optional bosses count in defeat alls. Let's find out!

No interaction time on the board member corpses either.

So the end boss is mind control/broad sword, of the rare-status-effect-spamming sort that I was expecting this whole storyarc to be full of.

And optional bosses DO count in defeat alls. Good to know. Gets a bit repetitive after I get into double digits mowing down the EBs.

...what, she actually whips it up? I was expecting some kind of stupid nonsensical haha-you-die screwjob.

---

I'd like to apologize for the relatively large value of these ratings. I was honestly expecting a complete and total Ed Wood production and what I got was, in comparison, fair and reasonable.

Storyline - ****. Non-canon tends to putty over the issue of playing errand boy at 45. And aliens just showing up out of nowhere, with only a little drooling sycophant as foreshadowing. (It helped that they showed up just as I was getting bored with the regular security forces.) The whole "I've poisoned you to persuade you to play along" thing is nothing I haven't seen before, as is the doc actually being in with the aliens from word 1 and calling me in as more of a very pointy diplomat. I was expecting nonsense and got cliches, which I just can't get mad over.

Design - ***. I can definitely tell the enemies apart, even at a glance. There's a glowing green minion, an invisible minion, a lieut with a tech shield and a lieut without. The aliens only have one lieut and one boss and the minions were pretty much speed bumps so I didn't care. I liked that the aliens and the security forces shared a color scheme, even though it might have just been an attempt at homogenization. But there's one map that's just patrols, and another map that seems to have maxed out on elite boss spawns. The former was actually a good bit of fun, but the latter was really more of a slog.

Gameplay - ****. The difference between this and the mime arc is that I took someone of the intended level range in for this one. I've got about one actual rare set - a Gaussian - on this character. The rest is just me playing the spiner for quite a while and being very used to her. The enemies certainly have a lot of what are supposed to be unfair tricks, but at this point I've attained... I guess you could call it parity in unfairness? Anyway, they have trump cards, I have trump face cards, and it was pretty fun and frantic when it came down to it. Only had to hosp out like twice the whole arc, and revive brought me back up another three-four times. That said, this is definitely a Not For Wimps production.

Detail - ****. A couple of little missing bits - clues, interact texts - probably just artifacts of a first draft.

Overall - ****. If I ran into this completely blind I'd call it a perfectly average arc. I was expecting torture and got the comfy chair, which while annoying at times isn't much MORE than annoying. Honestly if some of what I suspect are deliberate bad design choices are scaled back a bit this is a pretty decent challenge arc.

I guess what I'm saying is, if you want to make something completely bad you have to try quite a bit harder than this. So in that sense it failed.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a lowbie Peacebringer, diff 2 for more AoE fun stuff.

---

My contact is "the Mystic Lynne", which makes me think that Lynne is some kind of category noun and there's a Martial Arts Lynne and a Robotics Lynne out there somewhere.

Anyway, I get to walk into the Midnight Club because of a something.

...12 Midnighters? Can this map even support 12 Midnighters?

Ah, if they're all inanimate, then yes.

The custom enemies all seem to have the same description, except for their name and rank. It really doesn't help to associate them with their powers at all, which is a bit of a drag as there are some priority targets and some disposable ones.

You know, I respect that the ambush has got to be silent? But it's kind of a death sentence to just get jumped and have no idea whether the first shot came from some straggler or the vanguard of a new assault force.

---

Um, the place isn't called "The Ziggurat". "The Zig" is definitely short for it, and there are plenty of Bablyonian references in Brickstown, but it's the Ziggursky Penitentiary.

Wha wha wha wha CLEAR THE ZIG? This place is HUGE!

Okay, dialing this thing back to 1 and reloading the game. Got an unlucky spawn with two controller/healers in it and I can't even dent them.

Wow. Right as I spring the warden he tells me about two other prisoners and it turns out I'm right in the middle of a spawn of one of their guards, because I was fighting the warden's at range. Pop goes the squidly.

Lordy, there are an awful lot of ways to get multiple controls stacked on you. Including those mind mimes, who can do it all on their own.

Lots of fun to get controlled mid-air and drift over another spawn of mimes, let me tell you.

The boss mime objectives don't complete until the entire spawn goes down.

...which is just as well, as I get another hard ambush on me after the last one drops.

And yep, the mission's to clear out the ENTIRE Zig, not just the building itself.

I find the last one parked on top of an outer walkway in the yard. Not on patrol, just coincidentally standing there. Good thing I have innate for fly.

---

Carnies.

20 Carnies.

On this gigantic sprawling overworld map... and I'm bumped to 30. Well, naturally.

So, battles. Heroside carnies don't natively spawn lower than 40, which can be a problem when a map only brings you up to 30. I have to engage in a little luring and dying... okay, a lot of luring and dying... to get some of the Carnie survivors away from glowies so I can click on them, and escort groups so I can fight them.

Man. These mimes are just lousy with +perception passives. Targeting drone, SR, Willpower... I have no idea if any given group of them is going to spin around and fight me.

That's not a good thing, by the way.

Oh. The glowies were actually completely optional. And so, by extension, were half my deaths. Good to know!

---

Oranbega.

I SWEAR, if there are 21 freaking CoT mages to rescue...

Oh good! Only ten... destructible objects?

Yes! Destructible objects! ...and they're more vocal than the mimes.

Also I have no idea why the altars would explode or how the mimes would make them do it because they all have a default description.

So I find the high mage, and free him. The navbar says "find the high mage" but it's giving me an escort point to the door.

Now, there's something you should know about Oranbegan crystals. Allies will tend to aggro on them and, since they can't be targeted or destroyed, stay that way FOREVER.

Guess what I have to lead this guy past.

Yeah.

In the hopes that the escort isn't actually required I go off in search of the other bombs.

And die. Again. To a silent patrol that drops from an upper ledge.

Fortunately on my way back I notice that standing just within ally perception range will make an ally run toward you when you rejoin it... for a few steps anyway. So we get to the door.

And then he turns on me.

I have never been so thankful that "fight defensive" allies don't actually fight you on betrayal as I am now.

Oh.

Wait.

They don't attack you of their own volition, but they do assist anything else on the map once it decides to break your face.

This could be a ptoblem.

So yeah, when allies betray you they get enemy ambush "I know where you are through three portals and 100 feet of stone" follow instead of ally "I can't find my way around this pebble" follow. It's only thanks to a lot of flying speed and the high mage's insistence on Fortituding me before launching his attacks that I can actually take out all the altars.

---

The big boss, huh? I slip out to pick up a Shivan. I have a feeling this guy's going to be a downgraded AV.

...10 leaders. Uh... alright then...

Hey! Lucky break, the big boss is... right in the first room of the mission.

Uh.

Was that on purpose?

Anyway. Moving through, beating the same bosses I saw in the Zig, activating the cures (which apparently come out of some kind of vial I was never given?) and... oh lord, it's another defeat all.

Okay, the sorceror supreme who tried to pull this off is on the fourth floor up. He's a decent enough fight straight up.

Huh. The LAST objective up is "defeat DuBrea". Looks like another case of a plural objective picking the wrong singular when it's down to the last. Maybe, if you want them separate, you could have separate objectives for DuBrea, the fire/psy demon guy, and the generic leaders.

And the last thing I do is run back downstairs through an empty map and click on a transparent glowie I couldn't hear because of a nearby waterfall.

---

Storyline - ***. Was the excursion to the Zig strictly necessary? The story's told in a rather minimalist fashion (somewhat necessarily so) so the missions don't really have much to distinguish themselves from each other. It's basically OH NO DEMON MIMES ARE LOOSE -- OH NO STOP THEM AT THE ZIG -- OH NO STOP THEM AT THE CARNIES -- OH NO HELP THE THORNS SO WE CAN GET A CURE -- YAY IT'S A CURE BEAT THE BIG BAD. I appreciate that you want to give people a feel for the group outside the tiny tiny Midnight Squad map, but are two repetitions really necessary?

Design - *. This is definitely not an "all levels" storyarc. For some reason (I'm betting the AV) the third mission floors at 35, and really 35-54 is probably a good working range for this arc. The mimes are absolutely brutal. They stack defense debuffs, they stack slows, about half of them have a control power (does Beanbag come standard with AR now or did you add that?) and about half of them can heal the other mimes. Frequently it's the same half, which is a magna pain. Nothing like getting somebody down to a sliver only to be held and have their health just pop right back up in a green/red/blue/black swirl. It doesn't help any that there's no apparent reason for the mimes to have the powers they do, and aside from the big bosses all their descriptions are the same except for a name and rank. And then there's the Carnie mission. Purples, even purple minions, can wreck a day right proper. You can kind of cheat the standard spawner by making a custom group of Carnies and just throwing them all in there to get the 30-40 ones to show up, heroside and villainside. Also, I was not expecting to open the last mission by fighting the evil mastermind and then work my way DOWN through the ranks.

Gameplay - *. Entirely aside from the endless parade of deaths at the hands of the mimes, the missions are frustrating. Objectives that are soetimes required and sometimes not (generally searching the bodies), defeat alls on giant maps, double-digit required objectives pretty much guaranteeing one's going to be crammed in an out-of-the-way crevice somewhere... and then there are the ambushes. The silent ambushes. Except the powers are pretty loud colliding with the back of your skull. I realize they're mimes and they don't talk. Yes, I realize this. But having a hard ambush just kind of pop in unannounced, while it might be funny once, gets to be a serious drain. Here's a thought: invent different ways every mission for the mimes to be silent. One mission they're going "...", one mission they're going "---!", one mission they're going ":walks against the wind:", you get the picture. It'll still be pretty amusing but still serve the same purpose actual dialogue balloons serve, which is to let the player know there's something there. Oh, and the AV in mission 3, who is either a giant sack of hitpoints to wear down or a jagged knife in your back, and whose ally code is bugged anyway. Maybe just have him wander around and wreck things set to Aggressive once you spring him?

Detail - **. So what was with those vials in the last mission? Some beginning clue you revised out but left the click text in for? It's kind of a cool image which was rather spoilt by me going "wait, what vial? When did I get a vial?" The altars in the fourth mission just have their default description - more questions unanswered. And the mimes themselves all have dry, samey descriptions, up until the big bads in the last mission. "Bluman, Demon Mime of Walking Against Wind, possesses keen senses to detect approaching winds and prodigious strength to make futile progress even against hurricanes." That actually helps! "LeQuoi, Demon Mime of Being Pulled by Invisible Pets, can evoke the claws and fangs of a rabid dog and the life-sapping stench of... well... ANY dog."

Overall - *. Rethink the level range. Rethink the mime descriptions. Rethink the defeat alls. Rethink the need for the Zig mission. Rethink calling out optional objectives in the nav bar. Rethink the progression through the last mission.

No. CoX doesn't play very nice with alt-tab on my system..

Also it's rather resource-intensive, and Flash doesn't play nicely with a busy system.

Now that you'll be able to put a spawn of arbitrary size and pretty much arbitrary level in a mission, the last mechanical reason to fight anything in a hazard/trial zone is gone.

Not that the overworld wasn't pretty empty already.

So here's a reason to go back.

Enemy Action

Skulls pour out of an office building, congratulating themselves on a heist well pulled, and running for the nearest sewer when a hero approaches.

Scrapyarders surround a cargo crane, ready to beat it into unplanned obsolescence.

The Wailers have cut an Arachnos officer off from his base.

A gang of possessed scientists are building their own portal, to a universe where Oranbega conquered the world.

Destructible/defendable objects can be spawned in the overworld. Enemy spawns can bolt for the nearest "exit". Overworld escorts (short-range) are also possible.

So, what, just mix a bunch of more complex things into the overworld and randomly saddle people with more stuff to do?

No, not exactly.

PPD/ORB

PPD you all know, and ORB is the notorious international mercenary coalition, the Order of the Red Blade. (they WERE the Brotherhood of the Red Blade until one of their bases inexplicably filled up with caltrops overnight)

A representative of each of them is parked outside in every zone in the game. They give you the opportunity to go on patrol/bounty hunting against a specific enemy group, putting you into a kind of "TF-lite" mode like AE does now, where your party caps at a reasonable limit for the zone, and you can invite more people along at any time.

More complex spawns of an enemy group only spawn in if someone on patrol/bounty runs for that group ranges near a spawn point.

And if you're on patrol/out for bounty, you'll either rack up larger rewards for fighting the sort of thing you're out for, or there'll be a Vanguard-style merit drop mechanic, with guaranteed merits when you successfully resolve a complex spawn - catching the Skulls before they get away, getting the Arachnos officer back to base, et cetera.

There could even be tweakable zone skins, like in Recluse's Victory, tied to what patrolling groups have done recently against a particular enemy group. Call it three levels, rampant/contained/hiding, with features like graffiti or junk piles or impromptu forts showing up at certain levels.

So what's exploration have to do with this?

In addition to the passive benefit from people actually getting out and street-sweeping, patrol teams could periodically be sent a "point of interest" in the farther-ranging parts of the zone, with some kind of specialized encounter (troll fortress, coralax shrine, etc) or just a regular encounter with bonus rewards.

This might encourage active exploration. Certainly it'll get people more familiar with the various remote bits of a zone.

Well, I had an idea a little while back for a system where you'd check in with the PPD or some mercenary organization to go after a specific enemy group. You'd encounter them doing different things than a normal pass through the zone would reveal, have to prevent escapes, defend objectives, and escort hostages in the overworld map, and get routed to specific points of interest to investigate.

Not as spontaneous as exploration, but I think it'd really help give people who might be interested in exploring the overworld an excuse to go out and to it.

I'll give it another writeup in the S&I forums, I guess.

@GlaziusF

Back in the saddle, playing this on my lowbie ice/fire dom, diff 1 for the genuine lowbie experience.

---

Ah, the Circle. They do stock up weird bits of mystical knowledge about anything and everything.

The cave has a characteristic fragrance, according to the intro dialogue. So it... smells like a cave? I think the Circle's characteristic incense is jasmine and sandalwood, but don't quote me on that.

Lowbie Circle are a real pain, with the spectrals hanging around every dang where. I figured I'd be FIGHTING Coralax, so I really didn't worry, but.

No system text on interacting with the diary or the... uh.. coffin? I get system text on finishing the interaction with the coffin, that someone's tAmpered with it (note spelling), but no clue there either.

Merulina splashed down sometime in the Cretaceous and fell asleep as the Coralax established their empire over the waters. There's not really a timeline given per se, but the odds are it happened sometime before there was even such a thing as a "human" walking around on the dry land.

But okay, let's take this at face value and keep going.

---

Into a burning warehouse (don't like Oranbega much, do you?) with some silent Circle guarding silent coral monsters and Merulina, who speaks, on the top floor.

Funnily enough she doesn't look anything like the coral imbued with her essence. I guess that's alright given that she probably wasn't made of coral to begin with, but she looks more like a recolor of Numina.

---

And the final mission is in... the Banished Pantheon caves?

More of these captive coral guys. Called "coral wardners" (probably another typo).

Merulina is jeering at her captors. How do I know this? Because jeering includes a little animation loop where the jeerer jumps up and down like a monkey.

So it looks like there's a hard group around the... cauldron which somehow contains soil but still has its default description. And that means a hard ambush shows up to whack me in the back of the head once I engage the guards... and another hard ambush apparently shows up once I successfully defend it? Wow. That's a lot of ambushes for a lowbie to deal with.

---

Storyline - *. This is just really, really hard to buy. Merulina's set up within the game as a Cthulhu-style ancient horror who lies sleeping in the heart of a city built from her own body. The Coralax are Deep Ones with the serial numbers filed off. Moving from that to some Althena-style abdication from godhood is kind of a lot to swallow. I mean, even assuming an ageless being that saw the universe born fell in love and wondered where to go from there, Merulina's got a trick in her bag Althena never did, and it's the same one that a lot of mythologies pull: the goddess's lover gets a spoonful of immortality. Occasionally it has ironic limitations, but it's still immortality, and it's not like there's anything stopping Merulina from doing to an ugly bag of mostly water what she did to the coral. And there's never actually a mention of who it is Merulina was supposed to have fallen in love with, or any other link back, like what their children went on to do. It's just treated as a given that Merulina would fall in love with somebody land-side and give up the whole "ancient being from beyond the stars" shtick, and I just can't buy that.

Design - ***. I really don't get why none of the missions take place in Oranbega. The Banished Pantheon caves are of the cramped blue variety, even more annoying in their own way than Oranbega could manage to be. I was expecting more from Merulina than just some palette-swapped Numina, or whatever she actually was. Something more "beyond the stars" and less "human in a robe".

Gameplay - ***. Even with the small herd of followers I wound up with, the ambushes coming after the final protectable seemed more interested in me. That was a bit of fun rezzing and backtracking. And the second time it was just a rez outside, since the mission was already complete. This is on top of low-level CoT ghosts being pains to fight all on their own.

Detail - **. There's a lot missing here - speech from the CoT escorts of pretty much any hostage/ally, even if the hostage/ally isn't vocal, system text for interacting with the glowies, at least one clue for something (Merulina's grave) that I'm supposed to have seen, and some kind of explanatory text for the cauldron that's supposed to represent some grave dirt.

Overall - **. Don't be afraid to put the Circle in Oranbega. But the real stumbling block for me was the reason behind Merulina's disappearance. There are a lot of interesting ways you might be able to take the idea of Merulina's love being her undoing somehow, but I can't buy that she just decided to abandon both the people she created for herself and the ancient memories of the sea of stars. (perhaps her lover goes mad when the immortality transforms him and leads a schism that cuts the Coralax off from her?)

Sorry for the absence. This weekend I've been mostly catching up on my sleep. Let's get the week rolling with My Will (136438). Verdict - **. Review below in this thread.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a high 40s spine/regen scrapper, diff 2 for the boss fights.

--

You know, the main reason I hate good ol' WMD is because she likes to establish a sniping position in the middle of the next group over.

I wonder why they haven't had more missions against Arachnos outside of the PVP zones heroside. Villains certainly fight the heck out of enough Longbow.

...well, this is a fine kettle of fish. Judging from the battle dialogue there's something Longbow are willing to kill to cover up in this base.

And you know what that means. BOX SEARCHIN'.

(man, Longbow Eagles up in the rafters should be bannable by international treaty. I figured he was in the geometry until I spun the camera enough.)

Hmm. I'd always seen it as "ampoules" but I suppose that's valid too. I'd say "winners don't use drugs" here but since there's an entire origin where you dip your body into controlled substances it'd kind of miss the point.

Hmm again. Was Kobu running a little wacky stuff on the side, then, and is pissed at Livingston for breaking into his market? Or are those files a Longbow attempt at plausible deniability?

Internal Affairs, huh? ...you know, with all the cop dramas out there you'd figure there'd be one about Internal Affairs, but I can't think of one off the top of my head.

---

I'm not sure why WMD's apologizing here. I mean, Longbow on the home turf just by all appearances WILLINGLY turned their guns on a hero. I'd kinda like to find out what the hell is going on there, because if I don't then I'm going to find out ANYWAY, via a Longbow Chaser firing a missile swarm into the shower.

Huh. Is Livingston supposed to come free the second you step in the door? Since his clue is supposed to be him saying hello you might want to just put some Family around him and have him say something about how he's not surrounded, they're just all waiting together. For what? For SPINE IN THE FACE.

Huh. Okay, a bunch of crates of drugs, including one that looks like it was recently opened.

Why's that important?

I can't help but think of the cops who carried a little baggie of crack around with them so they could meet quota for possession arrests.

Interesting: Longbow had no trouble with the Family but the Arachnos patrols that spawned in later wiped them all out. Makes you wonder why Recluse needs villains. I do kind of wish you'd put Kobu a little closer to the back of the ship, though.

Oh. That's an odd little revelation. Well, a ship does go both ways. Stands to reason. I wonder why some random loose-cannon hero is more trustworthy than IA.

Then again this could all be an Arachnos plot to set Kobu up as a martyr. Infiltrate Longbow, start pushing, tip some idealistic naif off, watch the sparks fly.

---

...sure. Rescan the evidence. I can see this is going to go south.

Strangely enough it doesn't seem to, at least not obviously. Map's so very tiny though.

And the "defeat Knives" objective completes when Themis goes down, even though I'm still getting darted and shurikened by her lady friends.

I would actually rather this be on a very slightly larger map, but then again that would have the risk of putting a crate behind something earlier on and Themis would pop up in view of the player anyway.

---

Yeah, this is going to go over well. Even if I stop Livingston and save Kobu, Arachnos PR is gonna have a field day.

Well, the patrols and battles seem to think both of these guys did some coop-flying, so I just turn on my speed booster and find an out-of-the-way handle on the computer.

Huh. No clue from it? Obviously Kobu saw something that made him bolt.

Thanks for the warehouse base, by the way.

---

Huh. That's weird. They're after his head? You'd think Kobu would have some usefulness as PR material, but he'd probably fight against that, too.

...um. I just realized something.

Kobu's a bane spider. Got a mace and everything.

Bane spiders are linked together via a giant groupmind web thingy.

A "freethinking" bane spider is up for more than reprimands, he's going to be hunted down and killed just on principle. They did it with Gally's boyfriend in that one Phipps arc/Gunnm tribute.

Maybe he should be a crab? Can you get crabs in this level range? ...yeah, you can. Just checked. Fits his personal mission more too, since the Banes are Recluse's guards and the Crabs are described as equivalent to SWAT units.

I need to wipe out the last of Livingston's Longbow before he counts as defeated. Doesn't seem right. And I took out the Arachnos who were talking about defeating Kobu, but that objective's still there.

Wonder if I missed something.

Ah, yep. Bodybag tucked behind a crate in what was otherwise a dead end. Never even got close enough to hear the glowie. WMD was about 10 feet away from it when she spawned in, and while that probably won't happen all the time, maybe she could say something about the body when she rejoins you?

Those frustrations aside, the custom Malta were pretty nice thematic redesigns with about 95% less frustration. No lingering gun turrets! No white-out explosions taking out the whole blue bar! Takes all the hair-ripping out of those times WMD decides to fly right into the middle of some of 'em to "get in position".

Which she did several times. Still.

---

Storyline - ****. About the only harf here is that Kobushi needs a different model if everything else said about him in the story is true. Maybe a Crab... heck, maybe a Mu Guardian, considering the Crabs are Mako's boys and Kobushi fights for honor.

Design - *****. This is comprised almost entirely of MAD PROPS for the custom Malta. Now if only you could cook up a version of WMD who doesn't aggro the next room as a natural consequence of her AI.

Gameplay - ***. A couple of backtracks over emptiness. The first one was your deliberate creation in the cargo ship, the second was a tiny oversight on my part in the final mission that still drained most of the little victory celebration I had going. (The first probably wouldn't have been as bad if I didn't worry about keeping Livingston with me. After about the third time he got lost pathing through cargo crates I just said screw it and went on ahead.)

Detail - ****. I probably wouldn't be so bothered about this if everything else didn't fit together as well as it did, but one of the pieces of evidence that WMD gives for Livingston's betrayal is a little friendly-fire incident during the first mission, and I never saw or heard anything about that.

Overall - ****. Little missing bits in the story and little frustrations in playing it out. Nothing a little more polish won't help.

@GlaziusF

Playing this on a merc/TA mastermind, low 40s, diff 3 for real bosses without real crowds. (Show of hands, who's glad to be able to put bosses back on Heroic?)

---

...okay, this is shaping up to be some amazing parody right out the gate. Why do I get the feeling this'll be only slightly less dangerous than the average tour of duty in Alpha Complex?

Well, since the Manticore Task Force brought in some outside help I guess I can contract out too. Me and my boys mow through the Longbow, and get a bit stopped up when a patrol and Hopkins' group intersect with a normal spawn.

Every now and then I forget Crey actually has some LEGITIMATE BUSINESS to run. Jenny's a nice reminder, but she'll probably be a plant from Longbow, they generally are.

The crate labels are some pretty funny reading.

---

Ah, office work. Given that the dress code includes navy spandex and white ferroplastic armor I think I'm pretty good.

You know, even if I did quit my life of crime I still remember most of it. I like to think I'm a bit aware that Crey's a little, shall we say, shady? So even if my villain isn't in on the specifics of the things they did in Paragon City it probably shouldn't be too surprising to see the PPD storming in.

I bring in the temps and we go rampaging.

...Jenny, I'd like to have a little fun here, but according to my horoscope for today now is not a good time to photocopy my butt and staple it to my boss's face.

The security chief warning me about the cops seems like he'd make more sense at the start of the mission than at the end, though.

---

R and D! NOW we're getting up to Alpha Complex levels of lethality.

So, experiments. Somebody from the MTF in mission one, a Lesser Devoured (and weren't they all men once, really?), and... a giant pile of algae! I mean, Hydra.

The problem with all the ally spawns hanging around is that, first, a captive escorted by allies cons hostile but is still an invalid target, and second, they tend to get involved in the various boss fights and running battles. Jenny was free before I even did anything. Maybe a larger, emptier lab map?

Doctor Power Tank is a bit of a surprise when he jumps from behind some protruding power tubes, but all in all successful.

---

Hmm.

Aw, they're all hostile right away? It'd be kind of funny if there were a couple allied patrols and Jenny left the schedule on your desk in the back and you picked it up to find "things to do today: DIE, MEATBAG" and then the place filled up with hostile automatons.

...wait, what's the MTF doing hanging around here?

Oh, I see. Poor Ken.

The killbot is kind of amusing but... uh... how do I put this delicately? Lord Nemesis is not exactly known for his progressive attitudes.

The clue about crisis management should probably come after Jenny's briefing, too. But that can wait for I16 and objective rearrangement.

---

Wow, 15 minutes? I hope it's going to be a small map.

Fortunately it looks that way.

...I have this terrible suspicion as to the identify of the mole. The managers are nice enough fights but you'd think some of them would be trying to justify the terrible things they did in the name of SCIENCE, or something.

Hmm. Wonder if they fix that timed map + hostage bug in I16. Time to see if I can fail this the stupid way by just walking on by the cops.

Ah, they're optional. Well, time to see what they say anyway!

Sadly generic. I have no idea what Crey was doing here, which is rather a shame because it's probably hilarious. But in the end, you don't get a higher security clearance if you don't turn in those Commie mutant traitors.

---

Storyline - ****. Needs some suitably nefarious scheme to round things out, but more than that I'd like to see other recurring ally (or at least notional ally) characters besides Jenny. Operative Vargas's nephew, a deep-cover Nemesis automaton, one of those hivemind Paragon Protectors - some other recurrent thread. As it was the penny dropped on the last mission a long time before I actually reached her, just because I wondered what she'd wind up doing. Maybe that's just me being weird. ...also if this is a Countess Crey patron arc it's kind of odd that I start it off trying to go straight. That idea seems to evaporate by mission 3 anyway. You could probably get the same effect if Security Chief Contact was all "So you're after the support of Crey Industries, eh? Well, you have to start at the bottom and work your way up. Just like Countess Crey!"

Design - *****. Some good custom work to flesh out various enemy groups, and the Manticore Task Force is pretty nicely put together as well. I also like the way the mission environments work their way up from dingy warehouse to executive office space.

Gameplay - ****. Mission 3 was pretty much autopilot up until the end because of the large number of ally spawns and the way battles pulled them all around the map. Maybe instead of static scientist spawns pull a Crey ally ambush at 3/4 boss health, riff on only one of them actually showing up to help. I was a bit worried about the timer in the last mission but I had about 5 minutes to spare, so worries unfounded.

Detail - *****. All-round solid work on pretty much everything I bothered to take a look at.

Overall - *****. I can think of some things I'd do differently, but in the end humor fills a lot of the gaps. It's a good light run.

@GlaziusF

Alright, who's gonna fight doom, who's gonna fight doom... earth/emp controller's gonna fight doom.

On diff 3 for the boss fights.

With a magnaboosted animated stone.

GO TIME.

---

Okay, briefing gives me freaky reports from an abandoned warehouse. "Loathing" is a good word to use "almost physical" with, "nausea" not so much. Nausea's pretty physical as it is.

Hmm. Interesting customs, pretty austere costuming. Something bothers me a little about the description, though. Using phraseology like "the remains of a former human being", doubling down on decay as it were, makes it sound like the monster was once human, then became something else, then turned into the rotten thing I see before me.

It's just odd to see.

Anyway. Last time I found something like this it was a bunch of Warriors who did the wrong thing and got slaughtered. This time it's some civilians. End cause - probably not Envoy of Shadows, he's more with the burning. But there are older and fouler things than Orcs in the dark places of the earth.

---

You know, occasionally heavy industry is an accidental acquirer of these ancient spirits of evil. Archaeological digs into ancient forgotten cities, and that kind of thing.

With MAGI and the like around it's probably a lot less accidental most times.

I get ready to stealth past the innocent bystanders and then the patrol starts ranting about death and decay.

Then I check the descriptions.

Yeah, not so innocent bystanders. Smash time.

Apparently there are more of those zombie tablets out there somewhere.

And a cult leader. DM/invuln? Experiencing custom powersets with my body is not a high priority, I hope you'll understand.

And they worship an ancient forgotten god who wants to turn everything into goop. Better not let the ancient forgotten god who wants to hunt everything down and kill it and the ancient forgotten god who wants to eat the world get wind of that, there could be an ancient forgotten dust-up and the latter two are the killin' sort.

---

Um... hang on a second. Why's Azuria asking me to be gentle with the guards?

Oh, I see. They're not clueless law-abiding private security, they're clueless drug-pushing private security. That makes all the difference.

Strangely enough none of the boxes I actually have to tag show up in the loading dock at the back. I guess there's nothing like a boss you could put there or anything, but I'd like to see some "decoy" crates with other illicit goods the Family's been running, or records of their employment by Crawford, or something.

---

Okay, how does Azuria know we missed one? Just by the pricking of her thumbs, or was there actual evidence of it in the warehouse?

Maybe that's something to put in mission 3, a Family boss who fesses up to shipping one out to the hospital and doesn't get what your big deal is.

A clear-all in the asylum map. ...joy.

That place is hard enough to find my way around. At least there aren't any patrols or anything getting themselves tucked behind partitions.

Big U is an AV downgrade, so I burn a Shivan to mow him down. I get lucky with purple triangles and take out his minions with little effort.

He does chew the scenery admirably, I'll give him that.

---

Storyline - **. I'm not really feeling this one. It feels like an abbreviated version of some of the Banished Pantheon or CoT arcs that are out there, with a different coat of paint slapped on top. I don't know if it's the warehouses precisely that got me thinking along those lines, given that a couple notable arcs start out that way, but the Banished Pantheon especially are pretty much exactly a cult of an ancient forgotten god who want to summon it up and wreak havoc on the world. Why make up a new one? Also the missions do a pretty good job of having natural links from one to another, but that breaks for no reason I can work out in the interim between missions 3 and 4.

Design - ***. A lot of the missions are really sparse. The last one I can't remember having anything notable in it aside from the boss. While in one sense that's a help with getting a coherent image of the goals of this new group, in another sense it hurts because they're exactly the same as the goals of the Banished Pantheon, just swap out a name.

Gameplay - ****. Generally solid stuff here, though hunting down spawns that got split around the dividers in the asylum was a chore. You could probably get away with just an abandoned office map there, really, and most of the rooms would be much more open.

Detail - ****. Most of my problem with the story comes in at a higher level. The custom groups and mission details are sparse but pretty true to what they should be.

Overall - ***. A story that did what it set out to do - unfortunately, from where I see it, what it set out to do was replay a Banished Pantheon arc with different actors.

Tonight's random arc: The Doom That Came To Paragon City (28540). Verdict - ***. Review below in this thread.

My current queue consists solely of arcs by Venture and arcs by Escalus, so if somebody else would like to jump into the carnival I'd be happy to give 'em a shot.

@GlaziusF

Running this on a genuine lowbie, sub-teens broadsword/shield scrapper. Diff 1 for the genuine lowbie experience (forgot to correct it when I put the review on CoHMR).

---

Ah, sensible. Send someone who isn't Superman after the Kryptonite.

...uh.

A long, featureless kill-all in a warehouse.

And the enemies sap your recharge time by 20% every time one of those bolts connects.

---

Man, are these guys gonna be a regular feature? If all the minions connect that's like the opposite of Hasten.

...and as soon as I rescue the hostage I get five quantum guns to the face. Neither her nor I can move very much, and if I wasn't using my veteran ranged powers she'd be dead.

Also she has the system's stock lieutenant description.

Also I have to go through FIVE floor transitions (elevators, building door, cargo elevator) with her in tow, a couple of the rooms are a real pain to lead an escort back through (second floor of the building) and there's nothing on the way out.

---

...okay, the equipment doesn't need to say "boom" when it dies. I can see and hear it going "boom".

At the end of the objective bar I see another defeat all! That's doubly bad (this is a pretty expansive cave) since destructibles still do that thing where a guy spawns inside the destructible. If the geometry doesn't vanish, as it doesn't with these experimentation tubes, it's possible that guy can get stuck in there.

For all the help Lady E is I'd rather she show up near the middle to give me a wrecking buddy.

---

A... a Nictus powered robot? How does that even work?

But you know, okay, it's not like the Council can't build multiple giant robots.

Not okay: two glowies to click down a side passage I missed at the very beginning of the map. (Also my ally is missing her description again.)

Even worse: they spawn a boss.

...and in some kind of transcendent weirdness the boss spawns a long way away from either the giant robot viewport or the pump room just before it.

The way this map was set up I could clear it out without ever seeing the giant robot, and that's rather sad.

...I drop a warwolf Dr. Beckett and the clue refers to an... Archon Ziggy? What?

Yeah, the system text calls him Ziggy, too.

...Esc, am I playing another arc where you uploaded the wrong version of it?

---

...um, what? It's not over?

Lady E found a tracking device lab? But I thought mission 3 was her Last Mission or something.

I just blew up a giant robot base, that's a great place to end things!

So, uh. Did the Rikti even HAVE Kheldians swing by their neck of the universe? How would their technology be useful to track Khelds?

Also chained destructibles sometimes do this thing where you can't target them until you aggro their guards. This is a problem when the guards spawn on the other side of a wall, as they can here.

Since I basically did a second lap of the mission to date after hitting the glowie, why are they even spawning in at all? I've already got stuff to destroy and it didn't seem like anything chained off the mainframes.

Lady E is... at the end. Even after the Archon that spawns in.

I take him down but the mission goal is still there. Maybe his ambushes?

...nope.

Ah, right, there's a minion of his who spawned down a staircase behind a pile of crates. NOW the mission's over.

---

Storyline - ***. Like I said, I really didn't get the point of that last mission. Even if by proxy, I blew up a giant robot. The whole "I found the tracking system" just flies in out of left field, and it can't be allowed to succeed because voids still show up for Kheldians.

Design - *. Five elevators of backtracking with a hostage, two defeat alls, allies who in most cases I rescue largely after the mission is already over, some rather bizarre objective placements, and a custom group that really isn't suitable for characters of all levels to fight.

Gameplay - **. And here's why. Shield doesn't really factor into this, but a lot of defense sets don't get the tools to deal with negative energy damage until later in their career. And for anybody who's resistance-based, rather than defense-based, those bolts can seriously eat into the recharge rate. Lower-level characters don't yet have a full attack chain, let alone one with enough padding to handle the large recharge debuffs quantum guns deal out.

Detail - **. My non-Kheldian ally never had a description, and there was the matter of that confusion over the archon's name in mission 4. Clues are supposed to make you feel less confused, not more.

Overall - **. Esc, I strongly suspect this is another arc you uploaded an early, buggy version of, but if that's the case I'm not giving this a re-review. You've had time to check. This whole thing just feels unfinished and untested.

Tonight's arc: The Quantum League (286562). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.