Infatum

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On a game forum...?

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Gaming communities are very commonly the places transgendered people come to escape from real life as well. Being able to easily assume an identity that they feel fits them better and socialize as that identity is often an important part of the prescribed therapy in such a situation. Making sure our community is accepting of such people, and making them feel welcome rather than guilty of who they are and what they are doing should be a priority for everyone here.

The OP posted this in response to some of the strong sentiment on the boards that has been quite hostile towards the transgendered lifestyle. I don't believe their intent was shock or horror, but rather to show the consequences of a society not being accepting, and to show that very real people are hurt by such sentiment.

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As someone who derives quite a bit of pleasure from in-game biographies, my own and others, the line break bug drove me absolutely crazy.

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Likewise.

Having both a friend and a cousin who are transgendered I really hope stories like this soon become a thing of the past.

I'm sorry for your loss

When you publish an arc you are offering it up to the general public, just like publishing any other creative piece. There are people out there who do reviews of terrible movies and revel in the terribleness, just because these "movies" were independently created and are free makes them no less subject to review.

Frankly I would think if authors actually care about their arc they'd appreciate the publicity. The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

If they *don't* care about their arc (which I doubt either of the first two do), then they should have kept it in test mode.

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By the way, I should mention that the difficulty setting almost doesn't matter in the finale - everything is level-locked. 2 and 4 are harder than 1, 3, and 5 because they spawn larger groups, but other than that they're equivalent.

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Yeah, that was my point, I was on unyielding

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The exasperation you felt at each 'fail!' from synapse is funny...to some people. Not all, of course, but that's life

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I see where you're going with this, but again it wasn't the failures or Synapse himself that were the main problem. It was my own character's enforced silence that really made it all come tumbling down. Why not have the character tell Synapse what happened only to have him retort dismissively.

"What do you mean you defeated an entire hivemind that threatened the whole city? I sent you to fight frowniebots, you have to follow orders if you want to be part of the Freedom Phalanx!"

"What do you mean you were fighting your way out of an Arachnos base? I needed you to give Statesman a pep talk!"

"What do you mean you took out Tyrant? That's Statesman's job, you were supposed to fight Dark Infatum!"

Little things like that would go a long way in my book, but mileage will vary of course.

So I ran this last night, and didn't post comments on here at first partly because I wasn't sure I had anything constructive to say. Hopefully that's changed after some contemplation...

To start off, I am generally a fan of all things funny. It doesn't generally take much to make me chuckle, or at least crack a smile, but this arc really fell flat for me and I think that had more to do with the non-humor related issues sucking the funny out of the rest of it.

So I'll try to take a stab at it...

Synapse
First off, he's not sounding all that in character, but that's forgivable and not really the point in this arc. The real issue I took with him was the fact we get talked down to enough in the canon by the Freedom Phalanx, making him consistently berate my character for failure and forcing my character to not explain what actually happened (at which point any sane hero would start to investigate what's going wrong with the teleporter) is sort of a one-two punch of suck here. If he was *just* belligerent, that would be annoying, but it's the mission forcing my character to not explain himself which really makes it sting.

Having the player fail every mission by design, isn't great, but it doesn't kill an arc in itself. Having the contact rub it in after every mission with your character not even defending himself is really a buzz kill no matter how you cut it.

Mission 1
So I was honestly a little excited going into this, I don't know why. I'm not a real fan of the FP, but it was a cute concept. So when I hit the first mission I actually started to get interested. If this wasn't a comedy, that first mission could have been a great springboard for a more serious plot, but instead the strange female clones and their dreamworld of sorts never gets fully explained and feels more like it just gets swept under the rug like the player is supposed to feel it was some dirty secret.

That said, there wasn't much funny in that mission, and since the arc doesn't go on to explain it further or even mention it. It really contributes nothing to the greater plot, or funny or whatever you might have been aiming for. I have to ask, what purpose this mission serves aside from being a failure for Synapse to berate you about.

Mission 2
This one is alright from a humor perspective, partly because it was a canon mob acting in a non-canon way. If you had started with something like this it might have set the stage better, but instead we go from "quasi-serious arc about hive mind clone women" to "emo recluse". Viewed in its own light this mission would be alright, possibly even pretty funny albeit brief, but as part of the greater whole it just hasn't been set up for and falls flat.

Mission 3
So first off we have the giant difficulty warning, and having done the mission I'm honestly confused. The mooks in the mission could have easily been less dangerous powersets (I didn't have any problem with them on unyielding, but I'm sure others might), in fact it would actually make more sense for them. All of the Praetorian minions got their powers from their masters, so why go with something way out there like dark and rad, instead of something simple and generic like AR or MA? Praetorians themselves are considered solo content in canon, so if you toned down the customs I don't think you'd need the ginormous warning, just a standard note about EBs/AVs. This didn't detract from my personal experience mind you, it just seemed strange and unnecessary.

That said, this mission started off on the wrong foot by making an assumption about my character which was incorrect. Infatum doesn't have a Praetorian double, and he's 100% certain of that. That *is* a bit out of left field for me though, and although I don't personally think authors should make such assumptions. This is a largely forgivable one.

I can't say how much of the fun was sucked out by that piece, but I know it wasn't the lion's share. That dubious honor came back to Synapse and more importantly my own player who continued to take the berating on the chin because he's apparently too scared to plant his boot in Synapse's electrically charged [censored], or at the very least explain what happened like a sensible adult. By this point I was no longer having fun, and knowing I'd take yet another tongue lashing because I had the audacity to take down the entire Praetorian Phalanx instead of going to Fite Club, just made things worse, and made this long objective stuffed mission a boring unfun chore spent being called an ugly hideous monster (Infatum is pretty normal looking, so this felt more forced than anything). The clones were creative, but weren't even enough to make me crack a smile by the time I reached them.


Humor in my opinion is all about setting up the audience for the joke. The arc feels very piecemeal currently, and Synapse does his best to humiliate you in between missions and suck any fun you might have gotten out of each of them. So a couple suggestions:

Mission 1
Could this be accomplished with canon mobs instead? Simply making it a bunch of Carnival or Nemesis or something else entirely would turn it back towards funnier waters in my opinion. Instead it feels rather serious, who are these strange clone ladies? Where have they trapped me? Who was this poor soul who died here before me? These questions end up half answered, which is fine for comedy, but it doesn't feel like comedy as is. Having canon mobs act humorously non-canon can lampoon a situation like this. Warwolves, hydra, basically anything else. It wouldn't be shooting for the proverbial comedy stars, but it would be comedy.

Synapse
Is there a reason we can't investigate what is going on instead of forcing the player to act like an idiot? If you want Synapse to be a jerk off that's fine, but don't drag the player along with him. Either have Synapse and the player work together to figure out what's going on, or have the player try only to be rebuffed by Synapse time and time again, perhaps building up to where we *do* get the chance to beat the stuffing out of him. It's fine for him to be an idiot, it's not fine for the player to be forced to be one.

Praetorians
This mission is alright on its own taken entirely separate from the rest of the arc, but given the difficulty issues you seem to be getting as feedback, I'd highly suggest changing the custom mobs to some easier power choices. There's nothing thematically requiring mooks that put all other Praetorian mooks to shame is there?


I gave this 2 stars, a rating that doesn't sit entirely well with me given the quality of the writing, but accurately represents the amount of fun I had as well as what I believe is the quality of the overall design. If you dramatically change the mission briefings and perhaps the first mission I'd be willing to give this another play through and rerate, but as is I was having so little fun by the end that I couldn't even bring myself to try the second part.

I'd be happy to lead the Virtue run if no one else is stepping up to the plate. Does next Sunday work for most people? At say... 7 EST / 4 PST?

Edited because that time works for me, and Rieze responded first

So I will preface this with saying, I hate the concept of the AE. I hate the fact that according to canon every story told in this does not actually exist, and I instead choose to ignore the existence of the AE and pretend the exact opposite.

That said, these were a great 4 arcs, well written, well designed and quite enjoyable (Probably should have turned down my difficulty for the finale, but I managed somehow). You managed to take something I despise, and craft a story out of it that makes me very doubtful that whatever canon we receive on this will come close in quality.

A begrudging 5 stars to you on all accounts. I hope any future arcs you write are about something I don't despise

Figured as much, I have a tendency to gloss over the accept text more than I should.

Really enjoyed this arc. It offered a great supplement to the canon malta arcs, and did so with missions that were far more fun to play. 5 stars easily.

My only nitpick was the final mission, since I've never done a LRSF I didn't know you could enter the main building. Perhaps you could put a note about that in the briefing (maybe you did and I missed it), if it wasn't for a friend pointing it out I might have been flying around uselessly for a bit longer

Just played through this, I'll do my best to offer some useful feedback:

Character: Infatum - Level 50 MA/WP Scrapper
Difficulty: Unyielding
Rating: ***

My two biggest complaints of this story arc come right out of the starting gate. Who is this crey looking contact I'm working for, and why am I working for her? She describes an arcana based division of crey, and then basically says "let's beat them up, they're crey!"

This is one of those "they do it in canon so it's fine" things that doesn't fly with me. We're heroes, even if Infatum might under some circumstances dance around the law, you should be at least giving me something that might result in a warrant in bizarro land's justice system even if it wouldn't even come close under RL laws. Remember Crey *is* a law abiding corporation as far as the government is concerned, we need a dang good reason to beat them up, especially if we're doing so because they're invading Oranbega, arguably a heroic thing to be doing in the first place.

Specific dialogue regarding this:
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The branch itself is still very small so it hasn't gotten much, if any, public attention. I've dedicated myself to prevent that.

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What exactly is she trying to say with that? She wants it to get public attention? She doesn't want it to get public attention? Why should we care if it gets public attention either way?

In any case, I think it's very important to draw the player in early on. The intro is currently very weak, and really offers nothing more than "let's go beat on some unique crey!"

Moving on...

First mission, we get introduced to the arcana-crey and basically hit on most of the issues I see with this arc mechanically.

All boss custom group
Playing on unyielding, I was fighting an elite boss escorted by 4 bosses. Although Infatum stomped them into the ground, I'd imagine most characters are not going to be able to solo this kind of stuff, and I really don't see why you've made them so powerful. There's no offered story reason why Crey's mages should be so much more powerful than the Circle of Thorns who are pretty much the standard of CoH mages. In fact the last mission makes it sound like they should be less powerful. I'd suggest downgrading to lieutenants if you don't have enough room to make a more fleshed out group, and going with standard difficulty on all counts. Customs tend to be pretty challenging no matter what you set them to.

So many Elite Bosses
Elite bosses can be fun, I enjoy fighting them as do some others I'm sure, but they lose their flair when they're thrown around willy nilly, and that seems to be the case in this arc. Once I15 hits (with the ability to flag mobs as unique), I'd suggest only having the last two EBs as EBs. This would also fix the next complaint...

Unnecessary Level Scaling
The level of two missions scales down for the sole purpose of including two clones of a CoT EB. There is no obvious reason they should be EBs according to the story (The Sapphire sounds like it's only really being used by the big bad), and as generic bosses you wouldn't have the level scaling issue. If there is a good story reason for these, then it needs to be fleshed out more, if not, go with bosses.



As the arc continues, we meet the characters this origin story is about. Which I'm fine with, but...

Elite Boss Allies
There's really no reason for allies this powerful, at all, ever... I realize you have an attachment to your characters, but players are here to see our characters cleaning house, not yours. Scale them down to lieutenants with extreme powersets, and maybe I won't make an active effort to leave them behind every mission.



The missions overall weren't bad, the writing was decent. The final boss might have been a poor choice though at least mechanically. Although I didn't find him hard, he was so resistant that the fight became a long snooze fest of me hammering out my attack chain, doing double digits the entire time, and never breaking 100. If there's a different AV you could choose for this, I'd suggest doing so, as the one you used seemed exceptionally boring and probably deadly to squishier characters.

The only other nitpick I can remember was the custom group naming. For the EBs (most of who I think should be just 'B's), they really feel silly using first names as their titles. Instead of Necromancer Chris, why not "Magister Smith" or something. That would sound a lot more Crey-ish, and more inline with canon naming convention. For the Boss-Minions Archmage Acolyte in particular makes no sense and is a bit of an oxymoron, how can you be an Archmage and an Acolyte at the same time? How about "Acolyte of the Archmage" instead, or something else entirely?

Overall I didn't mind the arc, but it didn't wow me either. The biggest offense was the intro, and that alone being changed to pull the player in and give them a good reason for being here would earn an extra star. As I mentioned earlier your writing is decent, so this arc feels mostly just in need of some plot-based polish to take a step away from being just another origin story, and towards being a fun arc for the player. If you decide to make some changes, I'd be happy to replay it and rerate it, I hope I didn't come off as too harsh, and I hope you keep working on this arc

Augustine was full of fail as predicted, but TF Scranker stomped his missions into the dust regardless. Next weekend we'll have a *real* TF with Faathim the Cellphoneless and his evil twin of icy doom Lanaru. I'll post more details next week. Good job everyone and thanks for a great run!

And due to Hellion's reference we now have our token Blaster for the run

We're full up at this point, but we do occasionally have no shows, so if anyone is interested shoot me a tell tomorrow night and I'll let you know if a spot opens up.

You're mistaking CoH for other MMOs.

We don't do that "enforced teaming" hooplah they're so fond of.

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I would consider it. Basically boils down to when.

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Ditto.

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Now I remember something else about the fight - not everyone was softcapped by themselves (I think we had 2 Invulns, 3 SR and 3 DAs), so we had everyone who wasn't bring a tray full of purples. We ran out of purples before she went down, which doomed that attempt. (She wasn't even close, so retrying it would have been pointless.)

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I don't think it's practical to expect the full team to be soft capped which is why I suggested range taunting. If she's focused on a ranged target she won't use dark regen, and at that point the rest of the team can sit behind her to avoid the cones and give her a good spanking.

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It can be dodged? With enough defense you can reduce it's impact?

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My understanding is that it's got the standard single target hold accuracy bonus, but otherwise is a normal power to-hit wise. I'm fairly certain she missed with it twice after our tank DCed on our STF run. She ended up hitting one of the other scrappers with it eventually though.

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Basically, the problem is her uber-hold. Even if you successfully taunted her from range, the moment she hits you with the uber-hold (Soul Tentatacles?) your're pretty much dead. Tankers have a better chance at surviving the uber-hold by virtue of hit points, but they often fall to these aswell with out buffs or a very attentant empath.

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Assuming it hits (which is probably a safe assumption), 2 large break frees plus SoW is enough break out of it and between resists and 2200 HP I should be able to survive it or at least be able to pop greens at that point.

I would probably bring 5 large break frees a handful on large purples/oranges and the rest greens for that fight. Having been the subject of her wrath for brief periods of time last time I ran the STF (our tank DCed) I am fairly certain I can weather the storm for a full fight, but obviously I wouldn't know for sure until I tried.

EDIT: Scratch that, for some reason I thought her hold was only mag 50 not 100

So my new back up plan is my self rez

Having a second scrapper who could take over taunting in that event would make this reliably doable though I think.

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How about this. We get them but only use them if GW shows to be a lost cause. Dissmiss them after she is down, wait for any extra buff effects to fade, then carry on like normal.

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With the right inspirations I *should* be able to tank her from range (I have 30 NE defense normally, so I should be able to stay capped for a while with judicious purple use). While I spam warrior's challege to keep her from Dark Regening, everyone else lays the smackdown. Standard tanking practice, any reason it wouldn't work with a scrapper?

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I was thinking the same thing. The problem is that for it to be done, certain types of scrappers would have to be needed. I don't want this to be about powersets. Just want to grab 8 scrappers and run. Although, no temp powers no inspirations would be great indeed.

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Inspirations are fine in my book, nukes, shivans and the like are the only things that really trivialize a fight and would honestly detract from something like this. If we nuke grandville into a glowing melted smear I don't think we've really done an all scrapper STF.

I just use the console command. I don't need some other hero telling me how to use my powers.

I used it for a steadfast mule on my shields character, and it's nice to have available when you're in a tough fight.

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CC's I wanna see:

Worst costume
Worst bio
Worst name
Best clashing color scheme

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I hold those sort of contests at wentworths all the time.

I've been doing some of the TFs in the Shard as of late, and it is a beautiful zone badly in need of an overhaul of content.

Given how Rularuu is far more of a threat than the rikti ever will be, I'd think it'd make a good co-op zone. With villains having some villain specific content too where they can cash in on Rularuu's power like many of the villain groups are currently doing in canon.