Infatum

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Shrugs, I'm already enjoying the current farm missions, even the generic 52-54 boss ones. To me, the people on the team, not the mission itself is what makes the game fun. For example, yesterday I started a 54 boss team with my Kin. We had 3 good brutes on the team and we were fighting 4-5 groups of mobs at once. Sure there were a few close calls but it was also exciting (and amusing). It was a laugh-fest from beginning to end and we finished the mission in about 10 minutes. That was quite enjoyable and fun to me.

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Just in case I sounded otherwise... I think what you described right there is a *good* thing. Even if I myself don't have the same tastes.

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As for the end, i had a look at the dialogue for the Monitor and the debriefing, and I agree with you that it's not quite right. I think I tried to explain too much, in order to avoid any 'ah, but my toon never kills, so he isn't really dead' squirming from a Player. The suit line isn't necessary, in fact. I've removed it and slightly altered the debriefing to make it more ambiguous as to where he's been ported, whilst leaving in the equivalent of a 'he's dead' line.

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That sounds like a good route to go too

On the subject of silliness, I think humor mixed in with drama is good. I really *liked* some of the silly clues and the dialogue of the freaks for instance. My problem with the Crey group is that it takes that one step too far, and feels akin to randomly throwing some clowns into a murder mystery. Clues and dialogue, or even a single odd boss can add flair, but an entire villain group forces the silliness on you the entire mission and drowns out any seriousness (at least for me). It felt very much like Zoidberg's uncle's movie attempt in Futurama if you're familiar with it "Would it kill someone to throw a pie once and a while?"

Basically after that mission I almost had to reboot myself to take the rest of the arc seriously at all, and I think that not only detracted from the story, but also from the bits of humor that weren't overwhelming since it robbed them of a serious background to contrast against.

Just my thoughts on the matter, I do however remain vehemently against treating crimes against Crey as heroing by default

I thought the only major difference between Praetoria and Prime was that Miss Liberty was her own grandmother...

I'm always amazed what names are still available on Virtue of all places, I get the feeling most people just don't even have the slightest modicum of creativity *shrugs*

Everyone knows that all the real-life girls actually play hugely muscled male characters in skin tight spandex.

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I agree. It's great for farming.

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So are Task Forces.

I'd imagine in time people will come up with farms are are both profitable and enjoyable (beyond just the rewards). Perhaps they already have. I would guess that the Devs main goal regarding farming is to make sure that whatever people farm they also at least somewhat enjoy (at which point, by Castle's definition it would no longer be farming), and yes AE is a great vehicle for that.

Carving a path of destruction through a task force is half the fun. I've "stealthed" on occasion (more like just pulled half the map to the last room with me), but usually I reserve that for obscenely long TFs like Dr. Q or when I didn't quite have as much time for the TF as I thought I did.

That said, I actually don't mind when the team decides to stealth that much, I just start steam rolling by myself until the mission ends, but that's part of the reason I only play scrappers these days.

AE is fantastic. If I can't decide what I feel like doing and no TFs are running I just grab a random arc off the forums and take it for a spin

It needs improvements to be sure, but thus far I think it's been a huge success.

So I'm going to probably take a complete about face from the previous poster, but since you suggested I try your other arc I figure I should at least put in my two cents. Overall I think you have a story with a lot of potential here, the writing was quite good in most places, and the final mission had my full and complete interest. That said, there were a lot of points which seemed to add very little to the story, but instead detracted from it.

Mission 1
Freaks make good flunkies for pretty much anyone, so there isn't a lot to say here. Some more foreshadowing might be good, but it's not a terrible start, it just didn't hook me in as much as it might have been able to.

Mission 2
Crey... no one can seem to write them well. Even the canon makes a mockery of their own concept 90% of the time. Whether Crey corp has been discredited or no in the player's time line, they are still not simple villains a "hero" can go pound upon whenever they feel like it. Even if we assume the corporation does nothing but evil, they still have 9-5ers that aren't, and unless the PPD is a different sort of corrupt, they shouldn't be turning a blind eye on "heroes" breaking into offices and beating up rent-a-cops.

I give you a small amount of credit for at least having the contact try to ask nicely before sending the player in, but it falls apart from there. You might as well have had it be the PPD that stonewalled the contact and had us break in to their archives for all the difference it would make morally.

This is nothing new though, canon does it, every AE writer I've seen that uses the crey does it. It's really dumb, but it's apparently a commonly accepted sort of dumb. However, you go and raise the bar...

I give the contact a pass and assume he liquored up Infatum before daring him to get the info from Crey, or something. Fine I can suspend my disbelief and give this freebie, I'm used to it as stupid as it may be. Then I arrive intending fully to dodge my way around crey security, grab the files and leave. Waiting for me though are super powered janitors, book keepers and librarians apparently thinking they are capable of taking on someone who vacations in the Shadow Shard and uses Rularuu watchers as tennis balls. Where the heck is the security, and why the heck is Crey using people this powerful for jobs this menial?

There really seems to be no need for these other than to make any player who gives a damn about the story feel more guilty about beating them up. Plenty of Crey arcs use the scientist mobs for other purposes such as managing archives, and the mission would have worked just as fine with stock mobs, looked less ridiculous and given you more space for conversations and what not to help better communicate the story.

If this wasn't bad enough, you actually force the player to beat up said librarians to make a "clean" escape. Adding assault to breaking and entering is "clean"? Crey isn't known for being cheap on their security camera systems.

The clues in this mission are cute, and I think you could have a perfectly good mission with a few changes:

<ul type="square">[*]Give us a good reason for breaking into the Crey office (either ramp up the threat of the Monitor earlier so there is an aspect of desperation, or incriminate the Crey somehow, I'm sure they'd want to get their hands on a potential super spy like Monitor)[*]Failing that use a different group (maybe the contact knows a little about the Monitor, and knows he had a nemesis or something that would have more info)[*]Lose the ridiculous customs. They really cheapen your story, and are needless both mechanically and thematically.[/list]
Mission 3
Same problems as mission 2, but slightly less so given the use of actual Crey. If the severity of the threat was ramped up earlier on, or the Crey were incriminated this mission would be fine. The clues are once again cute if a bit over the top.

Mission 4
All good, no complaints here, and some of the Freak dialogue cracked me up.

Mission 5
Ok I really liked this mission. If you *could* make it easier to get the sequential clues that'd be fantastic, but I won't hold it against you since I know the limitations of the system. The multi-cultural Freak bosses (Maybe slightly pushing the canon here, but not in a bad way) were amusing, and made the clues that much more sobering as they rolled in. Everything was going great, you had an excellent finale and then you decided to slap the player in the face for no apparent reason.

Some of us kill some of us don't, but for those that don't it's pretty safe to say they don't assume their opponents will be able to get immediate medical care. If an empathy defender ran this you'd have a hard sell no? What really makes this silly is the modification he made to his suit. All you'd have to do is twist that so he modified his suit to *kill* him rather than dispose of the body, and make it so he just needed the player to essentially "press the button for him" by damaging the suit. I really don't see why you felt it necessary to take the liberties you did with that, it adds nothing to the story and really cheapens an otherwise fantastic finale.

I gave this arc 4 stars, despite all my points above the writing was very good and the story was stellar, and were those issues fixed I'd happily give it 5.

Thanks for the response Horatio. The fact you are listening and responding to the playerbase's concerns goes a long way in my book and I'm sure it does in others as well.

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I want Most Illicit drugs legalized, taxed, controlled and sold by local liquor stores, I want prostitution legalized and controlled. so to me if an MMO has problems with currency sellers they should sell the currency so the criminals wouldn't have a market.

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Interesting example of the first one you mentioned.

Not the same thing exactly, and probably rightly so, but definitely an improvement over the bloated prison system we have in the US as a result of our drug laws.

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I always think of that forum-goer as "underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore underscore"

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I always think of the sound of an EKG flatlining when I see it. Rather disturbing actually.

Welcome to Virtue.

Don't forget your towel.

Was doing a Sara Moore TF, we were half way through and I was getting sick of nemesis (which are pretty much harmless to Infatum unless they're vengeanced out the wazoo). So the next mission involves hostage rescues, and I figure since I'm the first one there by a long shot I'll just go "stealth" it by flying past everything.

I had already flown by and aggroed about five or six groups with my taunt aura before it dawned on me that all the 8 man nemesis spawns were wearing rularuu costumes for some reason... *faceplant*

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EDIT: Curiosity may have killed the cat, but that's because the fox wasn't quite curious enough to argue about going first.

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The cat gets nine tries, so she can afford to be a little reckless.

Can you get me free salad and breadsticks? &gt;_&gt;

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Seriously, China trying to ban this stuff is like the ocean trying to ban fish. That'll work....!

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Given enough toxic waste...

But yeah. China isn't going anywhere with this.

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Risk/Reward out of whack.

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Were they given normal mob level tickets? Even so they're really not that much easier than most mobs, hardly prime farming material I would think.

Welcome back

Someone else needs to form team Beta-Banzai.

I've only got enough in me for one.

They've only slightly decreased the impact of griefers, this really does nothing to fix the rating system.

Does this mean I don't need my 100 pack of body condoms? Why couldn't someone have brought this up before I went to CostCo?

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I guess what I'm trying to say is that making acceptance a priority, to me, is just as bad as not being accepting at all. If you have to think about it, you're doing it wrong.

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What you describe of yourself is the acceptance I was aiming for. Nothing more.

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The issue isn't about reviewing arcs released to the general public. The issue is targeting certain arcs with the sole INTENT of making fun of them. No matter how you serve it up, that's griefing.

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In the same sense Mystery Science Theater 3000 is griefing. If he was targeting people he'd be griefing under the rules, but he's not, he's targeting arcs. That's a completely different potato.

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And if you think any publicity is good publicity, get yourself caught DUI on COPS.

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I guarantee these arcs will end up with more plays as a result of these reviews than the average 0-1 star fare.

I guess we're full then... you're all crazy you know that?

Scraptastic Task Force Team Alpha-Awesome
Infatum
Rieze
Shawn Sage
Transhade
Shado-Strike
Soul Fane
Santorican
Willow the Wisp

Virtue
7 PM EST / 4 PM PST
Sunday, 7/5

We'll start forming up around 3:45, once 4 hits I'll start looking for replacements for anyone missing.

Anyone volunteering for camera duty? I'll try to setup fraps or something, but I've never tried running CoH with it before so I make no promises

We'll be leaving temps enabled, but lets try to run it without them first and only fall back on them if we have to.