GlaziusF

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  1. @GlaziusF

    Running this on a max-level spine/regen scrapper, +1/x2 with bosses on.

    ---

    Contact needs a bio on him. Even if he’s just a local boy tryin’ to make good.

    So some military yahoos placed a take-out order at El Super Mexicano and liked it so much they decided to steal the franchise.

    Oh hey! It’s the 5th! Well, they fit the profile.

    I begin to suspect this mission may be falling prey to the weird 5th Column replacement bug, as they’re all called “Salsa Baddies”, but a quick look at the boss (fire/fire blaster type) confirms that, nope, they’re all just stock 5th who are... supposed to be powering up their flamethrowers with salsa? Not that I could see, really.

    Sounds like a recipe for a flamethrower/ignite custom enemy, now that you can make those things and they’re actually worth XP.

    Anyway, boss goes down pretty easy once I weather her opening powered-up salvo. Frob a couple glowies and that’s everything.

    ---

    Storyline - **. All the really interesting action seems to have happened offscreen. The bank robbery, the villain’s entire ludicrous backstory, and the experimental super-salsa flamethrowers or whatever. What we get to play through is just a little cleanup operation at the end of it all. Not really very exciting.

    Design - ***. Pretty much a standard warehouse with 5th Column and a couple glowies. Nothing confusing but nothing really notable either. I’d expect some kind of custom fire-spewing enemies.

    Gameplay - ****. 5th column are stock as stock, but as custom enemies tend to open with Aim and other boosters it’s a bad idea to put those on an enemy that’s intended to be all levels.

    Detail - ***. There’s some amusing little detail in the presence of the bank gun and in what little we get of the contact’s dialogue. But the boss’s description just leaves me wishing we’d actually sparred over some of these crimes.

    Overall - ***. I expect more from single-mission arcs than I do of single missions in a multi-missin arc. I expect lots of interesting customs or unique or complicated mechanics. Things that might grate if they went on too long, but that are still fresh and new by the end of a single mission.

    This is just a stock sweep of stock mobs with a fancy boss at the end. These days I can go outside Architect and get pretty much that just about anywhere.
  2. Tonight's arc: A Tex-Mex Mess (127677). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

    Other random arcs I hit up trying to find one I hadn't played before:
    Cadence (466154). Verdict - **
    Premium Quality Mission (148476). Verdict - ****
    The Shadowy Way of Light (221466). Verdict - **
    A Jaunt Into Dataspace (1438). Verdict - ***
    Hammer and Sickle of Paragon City (351727). Verdict - ****
    All In The Family (128109). Verdict - ****

    My current queue:
    • Randoms!
    If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

    Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.
  3. @GlaziusF

    Running this lowbie arc on a too-high Peacebringer, +0/x1 with bosses on.

    ---

    Contact’s got no description. You can do that these days, and as the contact’s supposed to be a little weird you can get that across.

    Working with... oh, Hero Corps? They’re the Freedom Corps for-pay alternative bankrolled by those good and upstanding sorts at the Crey Corporation. Still innocuous this low, though. Anyway. I’m going to be undercover investigating why the Clockwork are working with vigilante types.

    The clockwork cog I speak to tells me they’re interested in getting some Arachnos scrap, so they want me to wreck an Arachnos base.

    Seems... pretty bland. A “base leader” is spouting off some generic stuff but he doesn’t have a custom description. He goes down, rambling about generic revenge.

    Well, if you wanted a pedestrian start you certainly got one.

    ---

    And now I wreck a Vahz base, save an incidental hero who’s had some armor pried off, and take note of the scrap the Clockwork might want - bomb parts for the Embalmed and bits of hero armor.

    The barrels of fluid seemed to just be auto-dumping their names into the navbar. You might want to give them an objective name.

    ---

    Now it’s a fresh Council installation, just chock full of tech. Hero Corps is getting worried and suggests I drop some tracers in with the scrap. (They’d make a good opening clue.)

    Ah. Bits of Council robots. This was one stop on the supply chain to Striga.

    Again, the boss seems to be dumping his name into the navbar. You may want to give him an objective name. ...and an actual name and, perhaps, bio.

    ---

    My contact decides it’s time to nip the Clocks in the bud, before they get Rikti weapons.

    Not sure why my contact Clock thinks I’d make a good villain. I’m still taking out threats to the city, I’m just leaving them to pick up the pieces.

    I engage... what is apparently the named boss and my sole objective. He pops Aim and takes out my health bar with two blasts. Hoo boy.

    He chains into another one. Dark armor/rad blast, with Oppressive Gloom and Aim.

    And that chains into a last one. Seems like energy melee with Build Up and... some poison?

    When he goes down, that’s the end of the extra parts. Hero Corps thanks me for my work and asks me to bring in the Clockwork cash. Evidence, you understand.

    ---

    Storyline - I’m a little put off by the direction you decided to take with this, mostly because the Clockwork aren’t really on anybody’s side. They’re just these weird scavengers that nobody paid attention to for a while until they started becoming threatening, and now they’re not welcome anywhere. NYC has rats, pigeons, and cockroaches, Paragon City has Clockwork. And at the 1-15 level range it might or might not be known that they don’t actually work by any rational principle at all.

    Hero Corps is just kind of a sidelight to this whole thing, aside from a nice little nudge at the end about giving up all the money. But really their only active canon presence, if you can call it that, are the difficulty adjustment NPCs in the various zones and a couple of low-level contacts who have to have the same spiel as every other set of low-level contacts anyway.

    If I were writing this story, which I’m not, I’d write it from the Hero Corps perspective, maybe with Colleen Saramago as this bumps up against the lower end of her range. Hero Corps is contract protection, and when the Clockwork start showing up to scavenge the bases some informer is pointing them to, well, that’s not in the contract. The second time it seems suspicious, and the third time the tracers come out. And the last time they follow the tracers to find some poor soul being coerced into recording tipoffs and the weird, strong new Clockwork.

    Design - The maps are pretty reasonable, though you might want to watch the last one - if you were intending to put a Clockwork in the “middle”, there are some tunnels behind the end room that count as middle spawn. The Vazhilok warehouse is about the right level of detail - some glowies, some destructibles, a little incidental detail, and a boss who’s at least kinda involved in what’s going on. And has a name. That’s more important than you’d think.

    There aren’t many customs and the handful there are do are just unique bosses and easy enough to see through.

    Gameplay. - There’s pretty much no way that characters who may not even have DOs yet are going to be able to handle a boss with Aim or Build Up. Let alone three of them. Just get that mess out of there.

    Aside from that, not much I can comment on with the stock enemies.

    Detail - Some non-stock descriptions on the notable bosses would go a long way toward making the missions feel less like arbitrary boxes full of enemies. Even the special Clockwork bosses seem to all share a rather generic description.

    Clues are scarce but reasonable, though if you’re going to stick with the clockwork contact I’d suggest putting his buzzing noises in yellow or something so they’re easier to tell apart from the surrounding text.

    Also if you’re going to stick with this contact you should write it a description, and maybe include some opening clues representing various Hero Corps gadgets you get to do your thing.

    Overall - One of the reasons I’d suggest rotating the viewpoint is that as it is most of the action in the arc - the Hero Corps motivation and the clockwork scavenging - take place “off-camera”, with the actual fighting and conversations both being to establish a cover identity, up until the action of the last mission.

    Even if the missions aren’t ultimately important, they can at least be interesting in their own right, overseen by bosses with their own hopes and dreams. And names. That’s something to look at regardless of what you do with the story.

    Also no Aim and Build Up on the custom bosses. Seriously, that’s kind of cruel in this level range.
  4. Tonight's arc: The Clockwork Crusade (126073). Critique requested, no rating. Review lower in this thread.

    My current queue:
    • Randoms!
    If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

    Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.
  5. @GlaziusF

    Running this on a max-level DBlade/Fire brute, +1/x2 with bosses on.

    For architect rewards. Second Dev Choice I’ve run that was on CoHMR anyway.

    ---

    Ah. Johnny’s flexing his old-school mob muscles and trying to get the band back together. Unfortunately free tickets and groupie privileges aren’t convincing the new warden. So it’s time for free stabbings and burning privileges.

    The warden is a grav/AR custom. Lockdown indeed.

    But other than that it’s a pretty normal PPD throwdown to get in, get the drummer, and bolt back to the flier. Dude appears to be noncombatant so he’s in no danger of dying.

    ---

    And now, an old bluesman who ran from the music biz when things turned sour and apparently joined the Family.

    You should be aware that, vanilla as they are, in this level range Family only work at about 33% XP. Not that you can change this, but hey, it’s out there for anybody else who’s curious.

    I crack some safes and find... some jewels. No clues. Just jewels. Because this is the only thing that appears in safes.

    Anyway, the “big boy” has willpower and strong enough SS to have Rage, which makes the opening of the fight fun. And then all of a sudden he bolts.

    It’s a well-sold bolt, he definitely spouts off something that makes me aware he’s bolting. But there was no indication in the navbar or the mission briefing that it might happen. “Don’t let Bobby get away” in the navbar and some highlighting when Johnny’s talking about his tendency to bolt in the initial briefing would help sell this.

    But I catch up to him in time.

    ---

    And now the CoT have absconded with his brass section, because they went dancing and some Succubus thought there was magic in their music.

    Or somesuch.

    ...I’m seeing an Arch-Mage of Death in here. Are these guys part of the standard Architect CoT spawn? Because they reeeeeeeeeeally shouldn’t be. They were an early attempt at elite bosses that had like maxed resistances.

    Anyway, the brassmen are randomly scattered and they drop a single mystic threat’s name as the man responsible.

    ---

    ...in a weird reflection of Johnny’s own personal arc, his last member sold his soul for musical talent to some demon summoned by the CoT and is now trapped in his own personal hell: CUUUUUUBE FAAAAAAAAARM.

    Oh. Cube farm on fire.

    Regular kind would have worked okay too. Better, even.

    Johnny’s... misspelled in the navbar. The H is missing from his name.

    He’s also a Lieutenant, which means random crossfire can melt him.

    And Woodson’s soul is still using its stock Lieutenant description. Nice look, though. Very corporate drone.

    Standard fire/fire armor end boss. His attacks pretty much roll off me like water. Johnny and nearly Woodson get pulped on his aura, though.

    And the band’s back together. And I get a souvenir with next to no description and a title that runs off the edge of the clue window.

    ---

    Storyline - **. There is a very narrow time window in the canon where this story could have taken place. It’s a great story to put in that time window, with good motivations and an ending that can be played off as both bittersweet and cruelly ironic. But outside that time window it’s kind of nonsensical.

    Johnny only learns that his soul wound up in his own personal hell toward the end of his single canon mission arc, and in this arc he’s drawing parallels between Woodson’s fate and his own. And at the end of that arc, well, his soul would sooner die than come back, and he has no passion for anything, let alone for music.

    This is a great story to set specifically then. Johnny wants to get the old firm back together and do a gig, in case things go too far wrong. And hey, when Woodson just waltzes out of his personal hell, that’s a good omen, right? (And somewhere Fate looks at her cards with no expression at all, and calls the raise.)

    But if it’s not set then it makes no sense, because it either uses knowledge or a motivation that Johnny can’t have, and as far as I could tell, this arc is just set at any old time at all.

    Design - *. Surprise failable mission objectives, my old nemesis. At least Bobby gives a verbal clue he’s bolting, and the Family aren’t real threats even if you haven’t cleared them out.

    Speaking of the Family, at the upper end of this arc’s generous operational range the Family are basically Prisoners in sharp tuxes. Bosses award like Lieutenants, lieuts like minions, minions like underlings.

    Speaking of operational range, wowsers but this arc has a big one. I’d suggest restricting it to Johnny’s arc’s level range (35-40) to keep it ‘contemporaneous’.

    I liked the look and powerset choices of the new Zig warden. I didn’t much like the last mission, though. I was expecting more of a literal boring office, maybe with some Nemesis automata though you couldn’t actually give those any other names when this arc was written. Palette choice aside, this particular map and the resulting extremely tight quarters the end boss will probably be fought in are likely to result in Johnny and Woodson getting charbroiled by Blazing Aura and the flamesplash from various area moves, just from trying to establish line of sight.

    Gameplay - *** In large part, stock mobs with stock fights. The Rage boss in the second mission and the Circle Archmage in the third are a bit out of true in this regard.

    Detail - **. All of one clue crops up through the whole thing. The last mission has a typo in the nav text and a stock description on one of your allies, and several of the stock models like the civilian captives still have their default description when they’re supposed to be specific people. And the souvenir is a little two-line nothing with a title that overflows the clue window.

    Overall - **. Architect has come a long way, baby. It’s gotten more capable, and I’ve gotten used to arcs exploiting its new capabilities. And this arc has suffered, not just because my expectations have risen, but because in the early, heady days of Architect we were all still learning and there was a lot more fudging of level ranges and enemy groups that I was willing to forgive.

    If it’s at all possible, could you address these issues somehow? At least the strictly mechanical ones.
  6. Tonight's arc: Johnny Sonata and the Hitmen (1001). Verdict - **. Review lower in this thread.

    A random arc that came up in my preparation for next time: A Clone of Your Own? (453091). Verdict - ***.

    My current queue:
    • Randoms!
    If anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

    Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.
  7. @GlaziusF

    Running this on a mid-20s stone/stone brute, +0/x2 with bosses on.

    ---

    Got some kind of slick-looking fellow as my contact. He could do with a bio now that you can do that.

    Anyway.

    Apparently a bunch of do-gooders are starting to organize against me. Thanks for the tip! Now I’ll show them what a bad idea that was.

    Anyway, there are some crates of propaganda and an Arachnos operative captive, but the only required objective is to defeat the organizer.

    And, apparently, his entourage, as the mission doesn’t complete until I hammer a Nullifier into a sparky pylon.

    It seems like some group of Paragon Heroes is trying to spread something called “demo-cracy” over to the Rogue Isles. One Man, One Vote, kind of thing.

    Well, we’ve got that. Recluse is The Man, and he has The Vote. Nothing fairer than that.

    ---

    So these guys are apparently raiding an Arachnos base and trying to blame it on me now.

    I take out a white ninja and hear some weirdness from within. I can only conclude that the Arachnos boss and whatever Alliance operative was supposed to be in the end room have decided to take each other out. (The operative is just named “Voice”.)

    The operative is a little scratched up, but he and his entourage just blew the heck out of the Alliance member. And an ambush? Maybe? I wasn't really there.

    ---

    And now it’s time to drop them all.

    ...strangely enough, this is the second bug I’ve encountered where a boss (Liberty Lass) spawns as a 5th column Wolfpack robot. The escorts were 5th too. Strange.

    Anyway, this Nerva plaza has pretty much every vaguely hero-aligned group in the Isles from the appropriate level range pacing around.

    ...oh. Apparently all this time this has been an operation from a local boy trying to make good. That might have actually been interesting to explore.

    As is the reason my contact has actually been doing this. He seems to just have been some random image consultant looking to drum up business, judging by the souvy.

    ---

    Storyline - ***. This is a small step up from some arbitrary paper missions. This is supposed to be a hero group agitating against... me? Or trying to establish a foothold in the Rogue Isles? Or maybe both? But I really don’t get a feel for what motivates them until I read the leader’s bio in the end, and I never get a sense for how they’re organized, except “they’re a supergroup”. Are people just doing what they feel like? Do they have specialties? Did some people used to work for Arachnos so they went to the base, for example? How’d they get in touch with everybody? Does Longbow just have a bunch of cell phones going?

    I don’t know if you kept things limited out of concern for arc size, but that’s not as much of a concern anymore.

    Design - **. I think because of some enemy/rogue alignments, the second mission is pretty much defused by boss infighting. The 5th Column showing up in the last mission are probably not your fault, but they’ve even clobbered whatever bio you may have intended for Liberty Lass. There are some nice incidental bits in the first mission, but there’s pretty much nothing in the second mission, and all the patrols in the third mission just feel kind of random. They’re good for giving the impression that these guys have rallied everybody for a stand, but that’s the only thing that gives that impression -- they just all come in out of nowhere.

    Gameplay - ***. The custom bosses are all sufficiently difficult to pop their relevant buildup or aim equivalent, which leads to a lot of burst damage. Several of them also have perception-boosting powers, which means they engage from a bit farther away than you might expect - Galactic Boy definitely has this aspect to him. This can basically lead to getting blindsided and killed before you can react, which is never fun.

    Aside from that, the stock mobs showed up in generally reasonable configurations.

    Detail - ***. There are some nice bios on the Alliance members that aren’t Wolfpack robots. Unfortunately they don’t really seem to relate to what any of them except for the ultimate leader are trying to accomplish in the Rogue Isles. There are some hints at larger purposes in the first and third missions, but these really aren’t followed up on.

    Overall - ***. A decent punchup, except for the one mission that short-circuited, but there are hints at a larger purpose that go largely unfulfilled, and I really think this arc would benefit from more of a backstory.

    I mean, as it is this is the little brother to Westin Phipps’ excursions against the Civic Squad, which is pretty much the ultimate in off-hand hero stomping. You’ve got these guys actually organizing offscreen so they may as well organize onscreen.
  8. Tonight's arc: Name Recognition (1976). Verdict - ***. Review lower in this thread.

    My current queue:
    • Randoms!
    If anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

    Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.
  9. Tonight's arc: Cole in Your Stocking (474611). Verdict - ****. Review in MA Forums thread.

    A random arc that came up in my preparation for next time: An Arachnos Slumber Party (335317). Verdict - ****.

    My current queue:
    • Randoms!
    If anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

    Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.
  10. Review as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.

    @GlaziusF

    Playing this on a Praetorian-range broadsword/shield scrapper, +0/x2 with bosses on.

    ---

    The Resistance Crusaders are going to explode an orphans’ Christmas, because it comes from Cole. Yeah, that works. And I have to break faces to stop them. Yeah, that also works.

    Mr. Boris Loff from KR sector drops. He’s got a stock description on him, but okay, this is the intro, it’s good to start simple. Apparently what spawned this is somebody’s leak that the toys were going to mind-control the kiddies. I imagine every Crusader with two sticks of neodynamite to rub together is going to want in on this thing now.

    ---

    Well, it’s off to investigate the production facility, and smash as many Clockwork as possible so it looks like random vandalism.

    Wow. Neuron’s Clockwork seem to work under Vahzilok rules. There are spawns of like eight minions in here just standing around.

    Anyway, I pick up an action figure and check a computer. It drops a clue about there being three other systems, but the navbar just says “find the other computer”.

    There is just one computer. (And one poor lab monkey headed out for grocery shopping.) Apparently the toys really do have mind-shaping inductive circuitry in them.

    My contact confirms we’re really up against it. Yeah, not surprised. As it is we come out of this as enemies of children or passive enablers of mind control.

    I don’t suppose we can just haul these up to the top floor of Crumpet Tower and wait for everyone to start singing without any presents at all?

    Yeah, thought not.

    ---

    Okay, so it looks like there may be some kind of master console, and if we disable that then the kids get their presents without the extra special brainwash. This is a worthy cause.

    Butting heads with PPD: also a worthy cause.

    Ah. I seem to have walked right into a trap. Now to override security before it all comes down on my pretty little head.

    I fight an energy/energy armor member of Powers Division, who does a good job of replicating the PPD uniform and aesthetic - at least as far as I can tell under the swirlies -- and find the schematic.

    ---

    And the Crusaders are back on the march. Yeah, I figured this would happen. ...though perhaps unintentionally, the contact’s bug text ruins what you may have intended as a surprise.

    The opening scroll also makes mention of them, but they’re really not evident in the early parts of this warehouse. Maybe you could put a patrol of them up front instead of Resistance?

    Ah, looks like the Arachnos were dimension-hopping in order to yoink some of this here advanced technology when the opportunity presented itself. This is a reasonable motivation, at least.

    And perhaps that’s the last of it. Though with this anarchy, who really knows?

    ---

    Now I take advantage of the good ol’ radiation man vs. lightning man rivvalry to get at the master control through a back door. ...at least, that’s the theory. My contact has given up hope of anything going according to plan.

    Don’t believe in the plan, buddy. Believe in the me who believes in the plan.

    The PPD patrols are talking about “Vetrano”, not-Ghost probably-not-Widow-either, who is apparently here to recover something? Aw man, she’s gonna be the end boss?

    Man, what the hell kind of hideous chance to hit do these lieutenants have? Admittedly they ranged into +1, but they’re not missing through my shield and three lucks.

    Anyway, the Powers Division guy from the third mission returns. He goes down just as readily, though.

    Okay. seeing as how the mission completed, it seems like BV led the distraction rush on the main facility? Maybe my contact could name-drop her.

    No clues for finishing this mission up, though. Odd.

    Another thankless effort by the Wardens. More resistance soldiers down than elements of Cole’s regime and he gets all the good press anyway. (Not that this is hard when you own the press? But regardless.)

    ---

    Storyline - *****. Okay, so part of it’s the novelty, this being the first MArc I’ve run set in the revealed Praetoria of Going Rogue. But damn if this ain’t a good encapsulation of the dead-end desperation of the Wardens, who thanklessly try to hold back the velvet glove of Imperial oppression and take a few shots from the iron fist of Resistance anarchy in the process. I was actually amazed and slightly heartened that it ended on as positive a note as it did -- I expected to have at least the by-now canonical option to narc on the Resistance at the very end, perhaps via a timer on the last mission and a note from a Praetor.

    Not that the arc’s weaker for not having it, but I thought I’d mention it.

    Design - ****. A little too much Praetorian labs. Don’t get me wrong, Praetorian labs are certainly visually interesting and generally effective to fight in without being restrictive. But three of them in the arc, and two of them in a row, is a little much of a good thing. I think you could reasonably sub in a shiny gold office at some point without much loss of storyline justification.

    The couple of customs who appear in this arc are generally appropriate for their enemy groups to the point of looking and functioning like they a “special boss” rather than a de novo custom.

    There’s a little in the way of incidental detail - the lab monkey in mission 2, for example - but missions are largely empty except for their essential objectives. I wouldn’t mind seeing a few to lighten the mood or twist the knife, as appropriate.

    Gameplay - ****. While the customs aren’t unreasonable and there isn’t much in the way of backtracking, for whatever reason the Praetorian clockwork really tore me a new one. I suspect this is because they spawn via Vazhilok rules - two minions appear instead of one - but unlike the Vazhilok they function primarily at range.

    I’d suggest perhaps creating “custom standard” groups in the Architect, basically composed entirely and exclusively of Clockwork, to bring them a normal spawn density, and/or making the last mission PPD with incidental Clockwork rather than the other way around.

    Detail - ***. A couple of misleading bits - a computer in mission 2 dropping a hint about there being three systems left when there was only one, and the surprise invocation of BV in mission 5 when my contact didn’t really mention her, giving me the impression that she was one of the complications he’d been worrying about. The Resistance leaders are also missing bios, just using the generic officer description. You might as well ride their terrible names for all they’re worth.

    Overall - ****. Definitely a fitting Praetorian holiday arc, with a very solid plot that carries it through minimalist design, enhanced Praetorian difficulty, and what may be artifacts of incomplete revisions.
  11. Quote:
    Originally Posted by SupaFreak View Post
    Thanx for the review Glaz. Surprised you ran this +2/x0 in the low 20s, but I suppose you had your reasons.
    Oh, haha, whoops.

    +0/x2, so I could occasionally see lieuts and bosses in the custom groups.
  12. @GlaziusF

    Running this on a low-20s broadsword/shield scrapper, +0/x2 with bosses on.

    ---

    Okay. The Midnight Squad is investigating Dark Astoria and I’m being called on as a team player, going after a couple of people who went to investigate an abandoned radio station.

    Huh. Tsoo. A couple of patrols of them make their way toward the entrance and that’s a little more odds than I can handle. Maybe you should seed them deeper?

    Oh, I see why you can’t. Death-flavored Banished Pantheon seem to be the primary enemy group here. (watch the spelling on “stench” on the minions) Some nice work with leading an “illusion decoy” to the top floor to rescue somebody.

    ...so I rescue a lieutenant martial arts scrapper who runs into combat on the bottom floor with the dark Tsoo ambush leader and gets promptly shredded. Mission failed.

    Well, I knew it was coming at least. Let’s see if a second go is any better.

    Ah, the patrols actually seem to be located randomly. That can cram you into the opening room something fierce.

    Finding glowies in a three-layer ring is kind of a sonic nightmare.

    There’s also a weird “allied hostage” in a death mask being kept back by some kind of beneficial spirits -- they look like CoT, but that doesn’t mean anything as their description is more mysterious.

    I abandon my allies and manage to take out the boss that way. Seriously, he’s capable of brutal melee bursts with shadow maul.

    Apparently the boss was doing some kind of initiation, and was pointed to the Midnighters by a Circle mage.

    (The clues for this are all out of order, which is weird. You can drag and drop objectives to put the associated clues in their proper order.)

    ---

    One of my rescuees was bitten by a death zombie. How much grody stuff gets into the mouth over a century in the earth? That’s got to hurt.

    So now, of course, I go to bash that Circle mage’s face in.

    For a moment I worry when my escort dies before he reaches his goal, taken down by a combination of suicide explosion and PBAoE damage aura. He doesn’t seem to have been essential, and the mage coughs up the info when he goes down.

    I am then beset by some sort of disciples of shadow. Archers, punchers, and psykers. After I find the tome I see another guarded shadow mask. Hmm.

    Apparently this alternate dimension has a laundry list of people they want to die and are willing to trade a lot of power for doing so.

    I’m not sure where you pulled “simulacrum” from as a key to this Circle’s power. It means some sort of visual representation or perhaps superficial copy. That doesn’t really say “shadow being” to me.

    ---

    And now I take the tome and stride off into the darkness. My radio starts spouting static, an air raid siren sounds, and the fog closes in.

    And now, the Otherworld Midnighter’s Club. Kind of a shame as it’s rather a small map to begin with.

    Ah. Nice use of powersets on the minions. Makes the mask’s pronunciations grim indeed.

    ...the summary is a bit odd, though. I was attacked by these things and fended them off. You’d think that would be important. And nothing the mask said really indicated “free them”.”They will come for you. Do not destroy yourself as he did.” Where am I getting--

    Ah! He said that as I headed for the door. Alright.

    Debrief should be spelled “adversaries”.

    ---

    I’m still incommunicado for this next mission.

    I free some Shamans from the Shadow Circle, and the Pantheon mask from the Disciples of Shadow. ...though the clue I get from freeing him seems to indicate the Shadow Circle.

    Anyway, time to rip up this tome Tormas lifted from the alternate dimension, and step through the portal into the Far Realm.

    ---

    Still incommunicado. The contact has been a very minimal presence in this arc-- what’s there is a touchpoint in between several small linked missions that are set up entirely in previous missions, which is a fairly novel structure but works pretty well.

    ...aw, road apples. The Ruladak cave.

    Double road apples. Elite boss right at the entrance. And you can’t manually leave this cave to get inspirations, so time for a suicide run! Looks like necro/dark armor.

    Anyway, the usual problem with this cave is a bit subverted as it’s full of Death Pantheon, who have glowy amulets on and are thus visible in the darkness.

    Oh, sorry. Not Death Pantheon. Recolored scrawny Pantheon. Looks like the enemy group is only minions judging by the meager XP.

    Also looks like they’re not the main group. In addition to the invisible spectrals there are Disciples of Shadow, who are generally much less visible than the Pantheon, because their main decorator effects are black.

    These shadow servants, who look like melee forms of the Spectral Demons, have enough Dark Miasma to spam up Darkest Night on you. This is a terrible thing to happen because it torpedoes to-hit and damage and it’s a click power in the AI’s hands, so you can’t crowd-control them to shut it off. Multiple stacks on a character who hasn’t even hit SO level accuracy is a bad joke.

    Also a bad joke is a Spectral Terror, which can stack multiple fears that also reduce accuracy.

    For some reason the shadow servants also have terrible reward scales - I’m guessing they’re in the same just-minions custom group?

    Hmm. Oh, alright. Looking at the end boss’s description, it seems like “simulacrum” is a generic category noun for this inhabitants of this dimension. Shadow simulacrum, where “shadow” is the important adjective.

    Anyway. I decide he’s got some more shadow guardians around him, pop a Shivan, am right, and mow him down. Obligingly, the dimension starts to collapse.

    And then, there’s only the report to give.

    ---

    Storyline - **. The arc is billed as an introduction to some new enemy group. It certainly serves as a simple physical introduction in the “here’s the group and their powers” sense, but it does about squadoo otherwise. Most of the motivation seems to be inherited from the end boss, but if the Disciples of Shadow exist without him I’ve got no clue what they might be up to in the future, largely because I’ve got no clue what they are.

    And it’s not just them. I counted about four separate new enemy groups in this mission: the Disciples of Shadow, the undead summoners and their walking dead, the “death cult” pantheon, and the Spectral Demon-looking adversaries. Are the summoners supposed to be part of the Disciples, or are they just coincidentally operating in the same place and generally hostile? The Spectral Demon group seem to be more along the lines of absolute guardians of the barrier between the worlds, and will try to dissuade all outsiders, regardless of who they are, but then again they seem to be serving the end boss who’s thrown his lot in with the Disciples. The “death cult” pantheon... are they supposed to be taken by shadow, or are they supposed to be the servitors of the notable Spirit of Death? Are they working with the Spectral Demon-likes to preserve the barrier between the worlds?

    The souvenir makes reference to a “netherworld”. Is this intended as the common noun, or the proper capital-N Netherworld that is the notional source of the “dark” powersets in CoX? It’d be interesting if it were the latter. We don’t really hear an awful lot about it, and an arc or series of arcs heavily involving the Midnighters seems like a good place to raise the issue of what it is and what goes on there, but I didn’t necessarily come away with that impression - the souvenir struck me with a thought, because I’d just considered what happened as a kind of generic shadow dimension.

    And lastly, there’s the issue of portraying the Banished Pantheon as somewhat sympathetic characters in all this, which is kind of a tough label to stick on malicious cannibal gods. I mean, okay, the gods are as malleable as belief in them, maybe at some point in the past a plague cult petitioned the ancient forgotten gods to grant them at least a merciful death, bringing the Pantheon into mystic communion with the Netherworld and mellowing out some aspect of them, represented here by the death mask. But that’s a bit of a stretch from the usual role of the Pantheon as cannibal doom gods who want to blanket the world in fear and chaos.

    This may seem a bit nitpicky on my part. You may even have explanations that you’re planning to set up in later arcs. There is one definite thread of motivation, but it’s resolved at the end of the arc. Certainly heroes don’t operate with complete knowledge of the various enemy groups from the start. But the problem here is that these four groups are all following their own mysterious agendas, so the product of those agendas -- the events in this arc -- are just one big undifferentiated mass..If I could eliminate some events by understanding a group’s motivation, I could make guesses about what remains. But as it is there’s just this mush.

    Design - ****. Call this 6 - 2. There’s some really great work with chaining objectives and NPC powersets to create notable moments and convey the plot in the absence of a contact who’s clued-in about what’s going on.

    The only thing that brings it down is that the major new enemy group, through a combination of costuming color choices and lighting conditions on the maps where they appear, are basically undifferentiated. It’s mitigated somewhat by the thematically distinct power selections, but this still raises the problem that if I get psyblasted, or see a heal come, from behind me and spin around I’ve got no idea who just did that until it gets fired off again.

    Gameplay - **. The arc starts off a bit rocky, with a mission asking you to find one glowie among multiple distractions in a three-layer room and then lead a lieutenant escort through a narrow passageway past a boss who I believe can one-shot her with Shadow Maul. Or if he can’t, he can come near enough. The next few missions are reasonable, but then there’s the finale.

    Oh, the finale.

    The Ruladak caves are a nightmare to fight in because of the artificially terrible visibility. On the Rularuu, or enemies like the Pantheon with a particle effect, it’s easy enough to actually see what’s ahead of you, but with the primary custom group here it’s easy to lose track. Top that off with an enemy group that is both practically invisible under normal circumstances and can tank your accuracy if it gets the jump on you and you’ve got a recipe for serious frustration.

    Detail - ***. Most of the fuzziness with the story is in how the various players’ actions tie together, not what they’re actually doing. That’s generally pretty clear. But it doesn’t help any that the descriptions of the various enemies either explicitly call them out as mysterious and unknown, or in the case of the Disciples of Shadow reveal details of them which, while they help flesh out the philosophy behind the enemy group, give absolutely no clue about their overarching motive.

    I also have a bit of a problem with the use of the word “simulacrum”. As it’s brought out in the arc it seems to be used to indicate what is necessarily a shadow clone of some description, but I don’t associate “simulacrum” with “shadow clone” per se. For me the word doesn’t necessarily imply any material or particular sinister nature. (If pushed for a material it implies, my first instinct is actually snow.) I read it as “copy”, so walking through a mission full of CoT enhanced by “copy magic” just left me confused rather than curious.

    Overall - **. Overall, this arc reminds me less of an introduction and more of a hazing. After a bit of a rocky start, there’s some great use of mechanics, good use of nonstandard arc structure, careful setup of consistent themes, and the presentation of some threads of a greater purpose.

    And when I pulled on those threads, I was dropped into the inescapable darkness, heckled and assailed from all sides, and the only thing left was to endure it through to the end. Everything else was forgotten.

    My immediate advice is twofold: don’t use the Ruladak caves to cap the arc without some major changes to the enemy design, and flesh out the motivations of the supporting enemy/NPC cast more so that your primary enemy’s motivations can stay hidden, or at least no longer be one unknown among many.
  13. Tonight's arc: Black As Midnight (482914). Verdict - **. Review below in this thread.

    My current queue:If anybody else wants in, the instructions are in the first post. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

    Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it hardly has to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.
  14. @GlaziusF

    Running this on a mid-40s ice/axe tanker, +0/x2 with bosses on.

    ---

    Flux is working with Indigo and reporting on an Outcast riot at the Zig. I go in to intervene.

    Generally speaking I find it helpful to keep with the multiple existing examples on this, and include some kind of description of the mission goals in the briefing, highlighted in light screen, with the accept text an objective restatement of the mission goals, in this case “stop the Outcast riot”.

    Heh. Thanks for telling me about Dr. Aeon, navbar. He would have stayed a mystery otherwise. (It’s good to handle cases like this with a chained objective, or a generic navbar entry like “arrest the instigator”.)

    So it looks like we’ve just got customs posing as normal outcasts with an attempt at appropriate custom sets. Certainly the costumes aren’t that hard to replicate. I’ll comment on this later.

    Dr. Aeon has found a timeline where Frostfire was never arrested and spliced it onto this one, creating super-powerful Outcasts. He laughs as he puts up a forcefield and runs away. (Nice use of the captive mechanic.) I fight Keystone to learn that Frostfire has escaped

    ...and get what I believe is a closing clue that’s just captioned “Dr. Aeon” with no text in it.

    ---

    Indigo isn’t exactly an expert on the future. She’s an intelligence operative but prognostication isn’t exactly her bag. Or temporal mechanics. Portal Corp and Tina MacIntyre might be good sources for this.

    Oh, the portal corp lab where you zone in on the top. Indigo’s just outside the starting door for assistance, which is always fun.

    Crimson’s also hanging out on the top floor, so now I have Longbow’s intelligence division along with me.

    Next floor down I find about half a dozen bookshelf glowies, all of which are linked to one brief summary clue, and all of which take like fifteen seconds to finish up.

    More notes on the next floor down, along with Dr. Aeon. The defeat clue mentions clones, but Dr. Aeon’s more about the temporal replicsimiles.

    For some reason the control computer chains off Frostfire (who drops some terribly meta lines about his original fight) even though he doesn’t seem to do anything on death that would mean I’d be aware of it when I wasn’t before.

    I go back a couple floors to find the computer, which is kind of odd. And with that I get a couple of largely identical clues about how the experiment can’t continue and the mission’s over.

    ---

    Storyline - **. Well, the idea is sound. Dr. Aeon is working on some kind of time-splicing technology and is using the Outcasts as a beta test. I guess to see if it can affect superpowered beings? So after we contain them at the Zig, Indigo locates his lab and we run in and take down Frostfire, who... is working for Dr. Aeon out of gratitude? Anyway, experiment stopped, world saved.

    I have a feeling this arc may have been kept down due to size reasons, just because I’m using all those question marks.

    Actually going through the process of finding out about what Dr. Aeon did to make the Outcasts so powerful, possibly in conjunction with the Menders or Portal Corp, would make for some good missioning, especially if it involved some of Aeon’s earlier, lesser-scale prototypes.

    Design - ***. While the Outcasts are pretty faithful recreations of their original versions costume-wise, the actual composition of the enemy group feels weird. I saw ice and stone minions, shock and stone bosses, and the lieutenants were shock and stone and for some reason two different flavors of fire.

    I appreciate that this arc may have been created under space restrictions, but even so this is kind of a weird breakup of enemy types, because the bulk of the opposition for any given solo or, likely, team running the mission is going to be minions, yet they’ve wound up with the least variety. Somebody taking this mission at base difficulty will see a lieutenant now and again but never a boss. (This is incidentally why I try to run Architect missions with characters who are better at handling multiple weaker targets than single stronger ones -- more lieutenants come out, with a chance of bosses.)

    As for map choice, well. The prison map was a prison and the lab map was a lab. You should be aware that you come into that lab through a portal, not through the front door, and there’s currently a problem with the automap where the large room on the top floor doesn’t show there. You should also be aware that people generally expect to complete maps by going forward, and forcing backtracking for no reason at all kind of breaks the rhythm, because usually backtracking is over empty ground. You should also also be aware that the bookcases had way too long an interaction time.

    Gameplay - **. All the lieutenant-class and higher Outcasts have Aim or Build Up if they have a set that has it. For the blaster-types with a blast set and a manipulation set, this gives them access to both, which is kind of a ridiculous amount of burst damage. You can probably get full experience off these custom Outcasts just by dropping those powers, since custom XP on things with two attack sets tends to be full even if they’re just a custom with the standard powers.

    Detail - **. The blank clue in the first mission and the duplicated clues (one objective, one mission complete) in the second mission should be addressed.

    And while on one level I appreciate putting the stock Outcast descriptions on the new Outcasts, on another level... well, they aren’t the stock Outcasts anymore because of the time shenanigans, so maybe they should have different descriptions.

    Lastly there’s the matter of Crimson and Indigo. While they are high-ranking Longbow operatives, they’re high-ranking Longbow intelligence operatives, and it doesn’t seem like this is a particularly secretive or clandestine operation. If you want Longbow allies, there are probably plenty of Wardens who’d be happy to put down a prison riot. Indigo’s also billed as some sort of prognosticator or possibly from the future, but she’s not really either of these things.

    Overall - **. This seems like an arc that’s cut out a lot of stuff to come in under the size limit. Unfortunately most of the stuff it’s cut out seems pretty vital, and there are burst-damage problems and rank-allocation problems in what remains.
  15. Tonight's random arc: My BFF Frostfire (122711). Verdict - **. Review below in this thread.

    My current queue:
    • Randoms!
    If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

    Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it doesn't even have to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.
  16. As far as I understand things, shorts and engraved bracers and shoulder pets and several other gender-specific options were done long about I4, as an add-in pack that was intended at least in part to reference other NCSoft games. Sometimes I wonder what modelers actually made them.

    I have a feeling they were single-gender -- single-model, anyway -- because clipping errors would crop up on other skeletons. The bracers would embed themselves in male forearms, kittens would be encased in the Huge frame's massive shoulders, and the shorts would regularly carve out even more of a male model's thigh than they do a female model's.
  17. GlaziusF

    2-XP for AE?

    Since double XP basically works by giving you infinite patrol XP, and patrol XP doesn't apply in Architect, double XP doesn't apply in Architect either.
  18. Yeah, targeting, especially on outdoor maps, can be a little hit and miss. I've noticed that some canon outdoor maps with in-game objective pointers behave the same way, like the last mission of TV's Nemesis arc.

    My guess is that it's pointing to where the objective should go but the spawn engine nudges it because it doesn't fit the terrain well.
  19. @GlaziusF

    Taking on this corporate slime with a high-20s stone/stone brute, +0/x2 with bosses on.

    ---

    Well well well. Go to another dimension and stomp around as a miniature giant monster in order to get them to outsource their security? Sounds right up my alley.

    You want an incoherent screed about their various personal failings that prompted this rampage? Only those are extra.

    (Executive could do with a description, by the by.)

    Anyway, looks like these cops are a mix of stock PPD, RIP, and private security, which could do with a little renaming and rebackstorying now that that’s possible.

    Green Shield could use a little more bio than just her archetype.

    The boosted perception range on the rippers combined with the swat and ghost gadgets (specifically the glue grenade and long-duration -hit -def flash grenade) actually make these cops a decent handful.

    Maybe that’s just a special consequence of playing it at 30.

    ---

    And now a little more murder and kidnapping. Should be fun.

    This building starts off pretty slowly. Two teeny little corridors before I get to anywhere where an actual objective might happen.

    In an interesting touch I use some of the world’s native Council gear that I... uh... happened to loot in the prior mission? I’m pretty sure that wasn’t suggested.

    Maybe it should be, since my contact seems to have a plan for mayhem.

    Wow. That’s a teeny little bomb. If there’s just one of it for this whole building it should probably be one of those big chemical drums.

    Seriously, all the glowies in this mission are kinda rinky-dink. It’s easy to lose sight of them behind potted plants and such.

    I find a supposed member of The Five, “Green Fingers”, who is a 5th Column wolfpack bossbot. ...is this a dig at how there used to be 5th automatons everywhere? He makes plant jokes, but, uh, pretty clearly isn’t.

    I have to lead the secretary down five empty floors to the exit, save for a single ambush.

    I completed the objectives in about the order the clues appear, but planted the fake evidence first. I don’t know if it should be the first clue but it should definitely be up there with the bomb. Now that you can drag and drop objectives this is possible.

    ---

    Ahaha, great. Now I’m sneaking a protector in to wreck the Council so Crey can run some guns to ‘em.

    I spring him (he’s a custom DMelee/DArmor) and then I patch in the cameras and run him up to the base commander to say hi. With his skull.

    The base commander’s clue should probably show up after the video feed one, though.

    Oddly, the commander doesn’t say anything as he goes down.

    ---

    And now it’s time to snuff out the major superpowers entirely.

    Oh. The Black is some kind of supertech heroine. Not what I expected. Tech implies being capable of mass production, but I guess this last prototype will have to do.

    ...sadly, as the Council fights spawn bosses and a few of them range near her, I only get to watch her fight, not experience it myself.

    ...um. I’m seeing some superelite Citadel model mech men here. Elite bosses. Were they part of the random spawn somehow?

    Red Flame is a space alien... looks like fire/ice blaster. Unfortunately she too gets unceremoniously taken out by a warwolf before I can really make contact.

    Wow. These lieutenant protectors have aim, short circuit, and electric manipulation. Pretty much a quick ticket to the bottom of the blue bar.

    I swear, these PPD Ghost flashbangs are broken. -40% tohit and defense?

    Having some real trouble finding where Doc Silver may be. Can’t exactly pick him out from a crowd.

    Finally I see him back near the entrance, and this time I actually get the chance to fight him before the Council do. He’s a robotics mastermind who spends most of the fight horizontal so I don’t get much idea of his auxiliary power. He does actually seem to understand what’s going on here, but too little, too late.

    And there goes Crey, funding each side of a war against the other. Godspeed, you crazy plutocrats.

    ---

    Storyline - ****. I’m a little torn on this. On the one hand it’s a pretty systematic invasion and demolition of a bunch of chumps to set up a slow and fraudulent drain of their money and plunge their world into chaos, which is pretty well-done.

    On the other hand, well, timelines. While it’s not a hard-and-fast rule what level band links up with what plot point, or who runs in sync with who and when, there’s definitely a sense that time passes as your level rises. And in this range heroside, Crey are still getting the hang of mass-cloning Paragon Protectors, so it’s not like they can just press a button and send a whole bunch of them with novel powersets to another dimension.

    I mean, if they want to use Tau Phi 7-1 as a testing ground for some new prototypes, that’s great. If this was Sigma Psi 20-7 that’d be even better. (If they’re just going to use stock protectors for a little bit and later on clone the remains of the Five as Protectors in a “symbolic gesture” and this was Sigma Psi 20-7 that’d just be icing on the cake.)

    The issue of where the Protectors came from isn’t that much of a worry. I mean, making Protectors is what Crey does. But their operation isn’t sophisticated enough that they can just pump clones with arbitrary powersets into an alternate dimension. Well, unless you say otherwise. But you have to say otherwise.

    Design - **. The last mission, though it’s pretty good for atmosphere, is pretty terrible for payoff, both because the battles, while certainly atmosopheric and fitting, are pitched in the Council’s favor and the winners can take out one of the remaining The Five all on their own, and because somehow the Council have an elite Citadel-copy mech on their team. Did you toss that into the random spawner or is it some kind of purpose-placed spawn?

    Also the PPD don’t mesh well with this being a low-tech low-power word. The equalizers and ghosts can lay down some pretty crippling debuffs, and when you get higher than them you get guys in powered armor firing off plasma bolts. The ordinary SWAT troopers fit the amalgam police, but they don’t have much of a presence in the operational level range.

    Speaking of the operational level range, you should probably make all the missions share a common range, ideally 30-35 since that’s what the last mission is locked into.

    Oh, and I’m pretty sure Green Fingers shouldn’t be a Wolfpack bot.

    Gameplay - **. This arc has kind of an inverse difficulty progression. The big open first mission with lots of cops running Tactics in fairly close proximity to one another is a constant threat to run out of control. The second mission is a normal run against the amalgamated police forces. The third mission is a short council map with a boss ally for most of it. The fourth mission... well, it’s a wild card. It can pretty much complete itself under the right circumstances, but straight-up some of the Protector choices, especially the elec/elec with aim, can make things a real trial.

    Also there’s the bit about escorting a hostage over five floors of empty office. That’s not very exciting. And the bit in the last mission, roaming through an overworld filled with dozens of bosses to find the arbitrary spot where three specific boss groups with no distinguishing animations have shown up? That’s not so hot either, if you don’t get lucky and have the battles pop the dialogue out.

    Detail - ****. Now that you can put custom names and descriptions on stock characters, you should look into that, so the police and perhaps Council of Tau Phi 7-1 have their own, more fitting, names and descriptions.

    And since The Five are basically one-and-done in their appearances, they could use a little more in the way of backstory. Crey’s got intel on these guys, right?

    Overall - ***. It’s a good plot idea. Very fitting of an amoral plutocracy. But the mechanical execution in terms of enemy, map, and objective choices is lacking.
  20. Tonight's random arc: Marketing Opportunity (83747). Verdict - ***. Review below in this thread.

    My current queue:
    • Randoms!
    If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

    Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it doesn't even have to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.
  21. @GlaziusF

    Running this on a level 50 stone/ice tank, +1/x2 with bosses on.

    ---

    Ancient Egyptian blaxploitation, huh? I’m down.

    Oh. Interesting use of the arachnoid caves.

    The mummies appear to be entirely composed of SS/Regen minions. (Also they mention being animated by the Scroll of Thoth, but I thought I was here after the scroll of Anubis.) I pop Brown Sugar, and head for the Scroll of Anubis... which is guarded entirely by DBlade/Dark Armor bosses, and summons even more of them when it’s damaged. As they have PBAoE attacks and Brown Sugar likes to scrap with them, I can’t prevent them from mincing her in short order.

    I run into Nefertiti while I’m looking for Harlematic, originally mistaking her for him being captured, but nope, it’s Nefertiti wreathed in green flame.

    My prestige quicksand helps overcome the dire -tohit from her DBlast/DMiasma self (locking down her dark servant helps too) and she goes down.

    Eventually I find Harlematic in the depths of the cave, his dialogue seeming to indicate that Nefertiti was supposed to chain off him? Maybe?

    ---

    And then suddenly it’s time to go to Romania! ...was the inscription on the ring in Romanian, or in some ancient language whose only speakers lived in Romania?

    Hmm. I was actually expecting the mausoleum-to-caves map for this, but it probably wasn’t available at the time this arc was made. (But just in case, “Roman” is not short for “Romanian”.)

    The fire blastroller is free at the start, so her objective never shows up in the navbar. AR/will and broadsword/will minions walk the halls.

    John Henry is guarded by the dark brides of Daddy Macula. Originally I figure them for energy melee but that’s just their soul transfer animation. Dark melee/mind control! That’s not a very good surprise.

    Anyway, with John up I go to search the coffins, and Macula spawns with a miniscule escort of gypsies. Because he and John are both EBs his health bar melts like he just stepped into the sunlight.

    ---

    Storyline - **. This does feel like being a friend to another supergroup.

    Specifically that part where they ask for help from their coalition to take on the tough fights in the punchy finales to two longer story arcs.

    I mean, yes, there’s something to be said for punchy finales, but at the same time there’s a whole bunch of potentially exciting stuff that’s just already assumed in the background. How did people realize Nefertiti was waking up? Did mummies crawl in search of blood to terrorize y’all’s neighborhood? How did they go about sourcing the ring? Was a distinguished professor of linguistics spirited from his bed in the middle of the night by the Count’s merchant marine?

    Abstracting out all the investigation and presenting just the finale is kind of an all-icing-no-cake experience. I realize this may have been done for space reasons because of the customs, but there’s a lot more space now. A LOT more, especially for customs.

    Design - *. So the enemy groups seem to fall into two distinct categories: entirely minions, and entirely bosses.

    Entirely minions isn’t really very challenging, as minions are basically speedbumps. Entirely bosses is entirely too challenging, as they can be quite resistant and are capable of large and sustained damage output.

    Entirely minions may have happened because you were originally space-constrained. Well, that’s gone now.

    Entirely bosses... well, on the one hand I can understand wanting an increased challenge? On the other hand, with the advent of SRSLY and 4XP, people have a much broader range of increased challenge to choose from, so it’s likely they’re already running at a comfortable challenge level and one of the presets is all you need to do. Otherwise you might end up with a scenario where, say, the seven simultaneous bosses that can’t be stopped from shredding your help are the toughest thing in the arc by far, and you fight them first thing.

    The mission maps are also very small, and made to seem emptier through the heavy use of patrols. You might think that the patrols would be adding to its population, but this isn’t the case - every mission objective involving NPCs, except for ambushes, takes up a spot on the map where a normal spawn might go. With enough patrols on a small map, the map itself is largely empty. They’re bare enough that I barely get any idea how my allies operate before the next big notable challenge shows up.

    And just as another kick in the pants, the entirely-boss sort of group, because of the modern Architect’s reward cuts, awards about the same as a normal group of minions, and the entirely-minion group awards chump change.

    (My personal suggestion is to just mash the mummies and Anubis together and come up with a lieutenant, and mash the brides and gypsies together and come up with a lieutenant, maybe a lesser bride. You could get away probably with a light escort of lieutenant and boss brides on John Henry.)

    Gameplay - *. The seven simultaneous bosses who unavoidably shredded my help were the toughest thing in this arc, with a combination of high damage output and considerable defense debuffs. It was all downhill from there. Nefertiti put out a ridiculous amount of -tohit, but the worst of it didn’t connect aside from the autohit stuff, and I had an autohit defense debuff. Macula’s brides were just a matter of endurance since they had far fewer 360-degree attacks to pulp my ally, and I’ve commented on the end boss himself, who with an EB and a boss doing damage output didn’t survive very long.

    Detail - **. Patrols don’t talk. There’s basically one clue in the entire arc. As I’ve said it’s basically like coming in for a couple of arc cappers, which would be designed to resolve a lot of lingering issues, but there isn’t any backing material that would put the two missions in this arc in context.

    Overall - *. An arc that seems like its original idea was very adversely impacted by the original mission limit. But that limit’s since gone up, and as a result what’s on display here is not so much the best of a bad situation as just a bad situation.
  22. Tonight's random arc: Die Macula Die! (10619). Verdict - *. Review below in this thread.

    Random arcs I flipped through trying to find one I hadn't played before:

    Get Ye Flask (36433). Verdict - **
    TotTSM:EE (360243). Verdict - *

    My current queue:
    • Randoms!
    If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

    Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it doesn't even have to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.
  23. Quote:
    Originally Posted by Nebulhym View Post
    You reviewed my other arc, From Tartarus with Love.., and it was very helpful. I actually made some changes after reading it. Here, there's nothing I could use, hence the disappointment...
    I've been working this over on and off for a while and I think I've come up with something.

    You introduce Daedalus's cartographer and the stolen maps and the secret of the secret project in the first mission, and that whole thread is just kind of hanging over the three interstitial missions, never really being addressed except perhaps for a tangent at the end of the fourth.

    As a result, however you've written the briefings, it feels like the three central missions don't really address the overriding plot, and we come back to it only by chance.

    So what about this? Mission one becomes mission four, mission four becomes mission three, mission three becomes mission two, and mission two goes to the front of the arc, with the plot rewritten to work the same way. Daedalus takes initiative springing the Sibyls from the satyrs (or asks Imperious for permission to handle it) because he's worried they're being used to uncover the secret of his secret project. In mission three the harpy queen blabs about the artifact and that now all they need to do is find the way, whereupon mission four is showing up too late to prevent Romulus's men from taking the map to the underworld, though the cartographer still has the map committed to memory.
  24. Tonight's random arc: Red Typhoon (4912). Verdict - **. Review in MA Forums thread.

    Random arcs I flipped through trying to find one I hadn't played before:

    Crisis on Effeminate Earth (79316) -- no longer published
    Signal:Noise (341194). Verdict - ****
    Power Play (187269). Verdict - ****
    The Sleeping Star (53951). Verdict - ****
    Holding Down the Fort (379065). Verdict - *****.

    My current queue:
    • Randoms!
    If anybody wants in, the instructions are in the first post. A part of these instructions, perhaps pertinent to this post: I always vote 5 in-game, as it seems a bit uncouth to ask people to jump through hoops and then bomb their rating.

    Something that isn't in the instructions but could stand to be said: CoH Mission Review isn't my private site. It's not even my site. Anybody's welcome to leave a review on anything, and it doesn't even have to be as long as the critical monstrosities I find myself putting out now and again.
  25. Review as part of the CoHMR Aggregator project.

    @GlaziusF

    Running this on a level 50 stone/ice tank, +1/x2 with bosses on.

    ---

    So, sneaking mission, weapons and equipment are procure on site. Got it. Let’s try not to cause an international incident.

    Hmm. Okay, it looks like I’ve been set up to cause one anyway. Second sentence of the opening popup should be “Something is wrong.”

    Oh. Malta. What a surprise. I never would have expected. Well, so much for not fighting anybody.

    I frob a console to look for clues, and there’s no activation message but it sounds an alarm, summoning “Renegades”, a custom military-style group with ice/device and sonic/illusion lieutenants, and minions I can’t quite get a fix on because I need to go Granite and deal out some damage. I’ll probably get a look at them later.

    For now: kill more Malta.

    Another glowie. It’s labeled “Misc 2” -- you should know that players can see those in the target window so they should get sensible names, unlike, say, patrols and/or ambushes, which can be named whatever.

    I find a patrol of minions on the next floor: AR/emp medics and AR/ninja spectres.

    All I find is a burnt note about attacking China, written in Korean. No sign of whatever produced the blood trail mentioned in the opening popup. Not even any bodies. Also the glowie is called “search for clues”. Glowies can have a navbar description separate from their display name.

    ---

    More spying, this time to see if China has any clue what’s going on, as they’re hovering their national fingers over the big red button and making demands of us.

    ...impossible demands, actually. Unlike most forms of debt you may be personally familiar with, a foreign government which owns a part of the US national debt has bought government bonds, and the repayment terms of bonds are declared by the bond issuer, not the bond purchaser. In fact, there is a thriving secondary bond market, and China could resell its bonds and net close to their original principal plus accumulated interest to date. Certainly China is free to extort any amount of money to not press the big red button, but our national indebtedness to them is an entirely symbolic figure for these purposes.

    More Malta and this new group, including a mind/psy boss who calls a large ambush on defeat. (It should respond with “en route”. It’s entirely a French loanphrase.)

    Apparently they’re handling MHIs while the Malta set up global thermonuclear war.

    I meet another boss. Earth control, with both quicksand and earthquake. With only rock armor running he manages to take my defenses negative and start stacking them down even further. Granite saves yet again.

    The interaction with the last glowie in the mission says “uploading” even though I’m presumably downloading information.

    ---

    So someone is planting information that the US is going to attack China and China is going to attack the US and North Korea is going to take sides with both of them. A group of North Korean black ops is apparently involved? But it seems like either way, North Korea would be screwed.

    While command tries to de-escalate the situation (note spelling) I go into a Renegade base and try to throw down for info.

    The boss is a real handful. He’s a merc/mind EB, who in addition to summoning a complete entourage calls for escalating ambushes at 25, 50, and 75 percent health gone. ...and, completely unheralded, bolts for the exit at 90 percent gone or thereabouts. This is a terrible thing to do, because the fight itself is already a giant slog and he may be bolting down and/or through a part of the final room or corridors leading up to it that hasn’t been cleared, because players aren’t expecting an escape.

    I spam my prestige immobilize and manage to catch him up, fortunately.

    Su apologizes... to my contact, as he goes down. And I find a letter in my contact’s handwriting, which is very odd, because how would I know what my contact’s handwriting even looks like? Am I reading his diary on the sly?

    ---

    Yeah, I’m betting on Moment here, especially since my contact is apparently in two places at once. But anyway I’m going to clear his name.

    Just a note, the mission title and subtitle refer to prompts that appear in the briefing window, not the navbar - this is the “compass active task text”. The mission title seems a bit redundant if it’s just stating the primary objective of the mission.

    The boss hiding in the first little corner should be called “Whiskey 5”, and actually should be called something like “Whiskey X-Ray 5-2-4” because the Malta boss pattern for generic dudes tends to go NATO letter NATO letter number-number-number, and he summons ambushes at 25% and no health, meaning double surprise Malta with the Sapper moratorium lifted.

    Apparently the Malta are expecting Kim Su here, and his merc group is here as well... kinda odd given that Malta are probably planning to cack him.

    Ah. Double ah. The unfortunate thing from a plot perspective with Going Rogue is that it is no mere mirror-universe, but everyone in Praetoria outside of the Imperial City is presumed devoured by Hamidon. So what I am seeing should not, technically, exist. But my contact’s mirror-universe self is ice con/psy, which means I get to watch my recharge time bonus get down to about -200%, and that’s always fun.

    ---

    ...oh for the love of little green apples, the Asylum map? I hate this map! I hate this map because it’s all full up of head-high obstacles with terrible geometries for navigating and I know it off by heart because so many people use it! ...well, not so much anymore. But so many people used it to kick off Architect and it’s short enough to memorize.

    Also how the heck is this guy going to get tougher than extreme ice/extreme psy?

    The mission pacing is set up so that the opening room is at -2 to the mission -- and consequently, so is my ally, my ice/psy contact. I realize mission pacing may not have worked when you created this mission, but it sure does now.

    And when I fight a +2 boss, he realizes that he’s grey to him, panics, and bolts.

    Fortunately the end boss is just +1, so he sticks around for that.

    You know, when my contact’s mirror-universe self said he had a plan, I was figuring there was another nuke hidden somewhere or something, not that he just wanted to have another punchup. He doesn’t even call any ambushes.

    Oh, and apparently he was only extreme ice/hard psy before, as now he spams shockwave.

    ---

    Storyline - ***. I’m a little confused what’s motivating Kim Su and his mercenary band in this. He’s presented as a North Korean national and operative, but his Renegades are working with the Malta to open up North Korea to invasion by both the United States and China. Is he just disgruntled, or being misled? For that matter, are the Renegades his band, or are they more assembled by and loyal to Mirror Spinks? In a story about international intrigue it’s important to have a picture of who is on whose side at the end.

    And what’s Malta’s angle in all this? Their previous attempts at instigating Chinese war with America were done to accomplish their twin goals of suppressing metahumans and defeating communism, and the war wasn’t an actual war; they planned to use a combination of a shapeshifter delivering belligerent rhetoric and killer nanomachines to make it LOOK like China had struck down American metahumans, and then show up to save the day with their giant robots.

    Mirror Spinks certainly seems as though he wants to engulf the world in a nuclear firestorm; this is a perfectly legitimate goal for him, but doesn’t seem so legitimate for the Malta, as they’re basically a bunch of Western intelligence operatives gone rogue. Perhaps they were using him until he was half-done, but that doesn’t explain why they continue to back him up after he’s gone to ground.

    Design - *. Surprise failable mission objective.

    I feel I should qualify this since I’ve brought it up two arcs in a row. I’m talking about an objective that causes the mission to fail when it’s failed, that a player isn’t expected to fail (an example of such an objective would be a boss that runs at 90% close to the entrance), that a player isn’t warned about it being failable in advance, and that in the worst cases doesn’t spout any dialogue that might suggest it’s running.

    Some type of warning, whether in the mission briefing or the navbar itself (for example “don’t let Kim Su escape!”) is pretty much necessary for a couple reasons. First, speaking as someone who can throw around a decent amount of slow and knockback, sometimes when an enemy can’t attack for a decent stretch of time they decide to withdraw for a while. So just seeing an enemy move away isn’t enough of a hint that it’s bolting and you need to stop it. Second, knowing an enemy may run is incentive to make sure its escape routes aren’t cluttered with anything to run into it, as opposed to stealthing it because you’ve gotten a bit tired of the Malta engineers and their tiny startup time meaning they can summon a gun turret even with a DoT on them.

    My other issues are the choice of the Asylum map, which isn’t a lot of fun to maneuver in, and the pacing on it, which turns my ally into a -2 occasional coward.

    The custom group is pretty well designed, with distinct looks and a decently executed theme. The only sticking point are the minions, who look identical minus the defense auras on one of them, and relying only on particle effects as a distinguishing feature doesn’t work very well when they’re the more subtle ones.

    Gameplay - **. The enemy group is pretty decent, with only a couple of rough spots. The sonic resonance lieutenant’s sonic dome gives anybody in her group practical immunity to all shut-down status effects but sleep, which is a bit of a pain as you’d want to casually shut down some of the minions and their -def assault rifles or the ice/dev lieutenant and all his slows. The earth con/fire boss has two placed zones and an entire powerset based around defense debuffing, which can cause a cascade effect powerful enough to take my granite form into the negatives. Just Quicksand or Earthquake, Animate Stone, and the single immobilize or hold will do for him.

    The huge amount of recharge reduction that the end boss and his earlier form can put out is a bit of an issue. Survival is really not so much a going concern, as if you could survive drilling through his hitpoints then there’s really no worry about staying upright however long the fight lasts. But the massive amount of regen means you’re attacking much slower and he’s regenerating comparatively faster, which just turns the two fights into giant extended slugfests since he doesn’t do anything as his health is whittled down. Kim Su, even with his bolting at -90%, is a much more varied fight, because in addition to periodically resummoning his mercs he calls big beefy ambushes as his health goes down. He was actually a much more dynamic and varied fight than either incarnation of the end boss, who was really more of a “see how many temp powers you have because your mainline powers are still recharging” affair.

    Detail - **. There’s a lot of words being used wrongly in this storyarc. “In route” is the big offender since every ambush seems to say it. “En route” is not a loanword but a loanphrase -- if you want to say it in English you could go for “in transit” or “on my way”. There’s also a general density of text to the briefings that the tiny game font makes a little hard to understand. Consider double line-breaks every couple sentences or so. Don’t break the rhythm, but chop things up a little more finely.

    The intent of the text is generally pretty good though. The customs get paramilitary bios explaining the original purposes of their supertech, which I thought was a nice touch.

    Overall - **. A decent story of intrigue, but plagued by typos and a few plot misfires, with a surprise failable mission objective and several threats capable of bottoming out your defense and recharge all on their own.