LaserJesus

The feature I'd really like to see is a spawn that has two bosses/LTs/what have you having a conversation.

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Thanks for the review LJ ... I really need to re-visit it with the latest changes ... Lady Canuck shouldn't have build up .. she is tough enough without it.

Yeah there was a lot of ice at first now 3 bosses and 1 minion actually have it .. the others give the illusion (like with a shield of ice ... but no slow per say).

oh thanks for noting the souvenir ... I put it off and ended up forgetting .. thanks.

[/ QUOTE ]
It was actually Captain Canuck with the build up.

EDIT: I mean Captain Quebec. I got the two names mixed up in my mind.

The Heart of Artemis
Arc ID: 162423
Author: @Thornster
Rating: 4 stars

Short Version
A fun, fast paced villainous arc. One of the custom bosses is a bit too strong, and the writing could use a tune-up.

Plot Synopsis
The Heart of Artemis is a mysterious and ancient artifact, the existence of which is shrouded in mystery. Many people are after it, and you plan to beat them to the punch.

Story
The plot works. It's a classic villain story, taking things from others for your own ends. You're constantly dogged by a Canadian hero organization called CANUCK as you fight through multiple villains to get the artifact before them.

The little asides in the mission introductions explaining things that wouldn't be ready knowledge to everyone, like CANUCK's nature (as it's a custom group), the legend of the Heart of Artemis, and little obscure lore bits about Malta, who are one of the villain groups after the artifact. Personally, though, I think they could be made into mission begin clues, since we can now use those in I15.

The grammar isn't perfect, and it does hurt the dialogue a little bit. You'd be surprised how much grammar helps to make dialogue seem more realistic. Things like commas, which seem to be the thing most people mess up on, help to really set the cadence of speech. Other little touches like that. It doesn't really make it so the text is unreadable, but fixing it up would make the dialogue seem more real than you might expect.

Also, quick note, the arc gives a souvenir that has no text.

Mechanics
The first mission took place in a pawn shop map, and really help sets up the pace of the arc, which is definitely it's strong suit. A quick smash and grab consisting of beating up a few poor Freakshow goons who are in way over their head and a battle against a hero followed by a quick loot grab. All the while, you're given plot-related clues to chew on from all of the glowies. The arc keeps up this pace. None of the missions are really that short, but the missions are filled with enough details to keep the fun going.

The third mission was especially chaotic. I entered the mission to see Knives and Malta break out into a fight, after which a hammer wielding giant of a hero runs at them with a roar to join the fray. Thanks to the closeness of the spawns, this sort of situation happened a few times. It had the unfortunate side effect of finishing a defend object later on in the mission for me, but I am fine with that, because that mission was all kinds of chaotic fun.

Captain Canuck, however, has build up. I realize that's my special pet peeve, but it really does take a boss that already has some heavy hitting attacks and puts them into the "OH GOD PLEASE DON'T HURT ME" level. And this is on my Scrapper. Blasters wouldn't even have time to get to "OH GOD". Especially now that we have near complete control over the powers that custom critters get, please, make the right choice and give your bosses more attacks instead of build up.

The bosses and some of the minions of CANUCK are rather heavy on the ice. The slows could cause problems for some, but for the most part the ice attacks were limited to a couple bosses and a minion with ice blast, as far as I could tell.

Final Thoughts
If you absolutely cannot stand fighting Malta or Knives, avoid this mission, because... well, you'll fight Malta and Knives. However, if you don't mind them so much, you'll probably have a good time. You can always play on difficulty 1 if the bosses are too much.

#97983, Tales of the Creatures From Another Forbidden Planet has a mission that references Them!.

I didn't write it myself, but it's got exactly what you're looking for.

Both of those are possible. I have the non-required boss who spawns ambushes in one of my missions. You can even set the nav window up to say "Don't fight X (optional)".

[ QUOTE ]
One star episode!

[/ QUOTE ]
That gets a pass for being a parody.

The Day I Tried To Live
Arc ID: 214195
Author: @Mr. Crowley
Rating: 1 star

Quick Version
The novelty of the unconventional storytelling is unfortunately overshadowed by incredible angst and outright plagiarism.

Plot Synopsis
Relive the memories of a man's tale of loss and revenge.

Story
Wow. The angst is laid on incredibly heavy from the moment you read the description, and becomes heavier when you read the opening text for the first mission. It continues on in this fashion.

The first mission involves the contact (who you are reliving the memories of) finding his girlfriend's dead body in a Crey lab. Upon finding it, he kills everyone in the Crey lab, where experiments are being done to turn people into Rikti. Through this process, the contact believes that he has killed God.

After this, I'm sure that every mission onwards is a complete fabrication in the contact's mind. He believes that he is losing his humanity, and in order to regain it he must fly to a Rikti Ship orbiting Jupiter and destroy it. Upon doing so, he heads back to Earth to destroy it and remake it in his image. He rampages through Atlas Park, only to have his wings ripped off by Manticore. Afterwards, he decides to kill the inhuman Machine inside of him, which I'm pretty sure is a metaphor for his suicide.

However, it's not the plot that made this 1 star. It's not the lines dripping with so much angst they become Bathos that made it 1 star. No. It's the plagiarism.

In the missions, you will find captives that look like the contact, who are supposed to represent the voices in his head. Nearly every one of the lines they say are lyrics from Nine Inch Nails songs. One of them is named The Great Destroyer, which is the title of a Nine Inch Nails song, and I'm pretty sure that The Machine is a reference to Pretty Hate Machine, the name of NiN's first album.

Inspiration and allusion are one thing. For instance, all of the mission titles are the titles of Nine Inch Nails songs. That's not a problem. I've done that before. I make literary references and allegories in all of my arcs. However, this is too much.

I have one good thing to say about the story. Placing the player in the place of the contact, reliving his memories, is something I haven't seen in any other AE mission that I've played. However, the novelty wore off fast.

Mechanics
There are relatively few custom enemies in the arc. You'll mainly be facing Crey and Rikti. The fourth mission utilizes a custom group made up of Longbow, PPD, and custom enemies. The only one of the custom enemies that were annoying was the one with radiation emission, as it had radiation infection. The final boss in the last mission went down without much incident at all.

The third mission, wow. Huge. Also didn't really fit the description of the mission. It uses a map that's a lab that transfers into caves and then a Rikti base. It's a pretty weird spaceship that has a cave in it. It's also so big as to be completely tedious.

Final Thoughts
The plagiarism has got to go. Using NiN as inspiration and making allegories in the mission titles is one thing, but going so far as to name your NPCs after NiN songs and having them say lyrics is no good.

[ QUOTE ]
he three allies are actually just bosses, not EBs, although they do all have Build Up or some variant thereof...

[/ QUOTE ]
My bad. I did mean to say they were bosses with build up and high damaging attacks. 3 bosses is a lot of help to start with, but the fact that they are so powerful makes it worse. Just toning down their power level would do a lot to make it not such a cakewalk. The easiness of the last mission is also magnified by the fact that many of the earlier missions do send you into some pretty extreme situations, making the last mission seem anti-climactic in comparison.

Added my new review thread.

<ul type="square">[*]Altoholic_Monkey -- Indies (1 mission) | Sequels (2-3 missions) | Epics (4-5 missions)[*]Beach_Lifeguard[*]Bubbawheat | (In Character) [*]DeviousMe (QPQ) (no longer accepting submissions)[*]Dragonslay[*]Frozen_Northman (QPQ)[*]Glazius (read first post for conditions)[*]HolyEvilAoD (no longer accepting submissions)[*]Jophiel[*]Lazarus -- New (Semi-QPQ), Old[*]LaserJesus -- Old, New[*]Misho[*]Parkin (read first post for conditions)[*]Peacemoon (QPQ)[*]PoliceWoman (QPQ) | Reviews of arcs written by other Reviewers[*]ridiculous_girl (QPQ)[*]SteelSky[*]Stomphoof (QPQ)[*]Talen_Lee[*]TerminusEst13 (Focuses on BAD arcs)[*]theHedoren (QPQ)[*]Venture[*]Wrong Number (Humor Arcs, QPQ)[/list]
EU reviewers
<ul type="square">[*]Col.Blitzkrieger (no longer accepting submissions)[*]Leese[*]Master_Zaprobo (In character)[/list]
Review sites
<ul type="square">[*]City of Guides - Mission Architect[*]CoH Mission Review[*]Mission Architect Advanced Search Site[/list]
Note: QPQ = quid pro quo: Play and rate/give feedback to the reviewer first in order to get a review on your arc, some are more lenient on this than others. Also, tends to have a shorter queue.

Also, some non-QPQ have more than one reviewer with some not accepting new submissions, check the most recent page for up-to-date information.

Semi-QPQ means that the reviewer only requires it for longer, in depth reviews and not for short, quick reviews.

How To Survive a Robot Uprising
Arc ID: 12669
Author: @Wall of Knight
Rating: 3 stars

Quick Version
A good plot that may annoy some with it's "Mwahaha I will return!" ending. Some issues with difficulty.

Plot Synopsis
After the Council Rogue Robot incident, a new mechanical threat has arrived to destroy all the good and decent organic citizens of the world.

Story
There's a LOT of NPC chatter going on in missions. I had to go back to my NPC tab a lot just to keep up with the story. Not necessarily a huge problem, but it does tend to make things a bit confusing. For instance, if one of the Malta soldiers indeed did mention that Crimson was supposed to be in China during the third mission, I missed it entirely. Someone could easily miss the fact that the robots are planning to take over the Arbiter Drones in the second mission as well, until they read their clues and go "U-wha?"

Like I mentioned earlier, the ending could leave a need for closure. The souvenir does explain the plot if you haven't already figured it out, but I can see some getting upset that the main villain isn't defeated at the end. I guess that if you're one of those people, this is an arc to avoid.

Mechanics
The difficulty shoots up and down from mission to mission. The first mission is relatively easy, except for the presence of a Vanguard HVAS. Having fought these before, I knew what I was getting into. For those of you who haven't, the Vanguard HVAS' laser blast is a DoT that can easily one shot your average scrapper. I defeated it without incident using Elude and having the help of the elite boss ally that had kinetics. My experience however is probably going to be the exception rather than the rule.

Are you sure you didn't mean you'd advise against difficulty 2 or 4 in the third mission, and not the last? Because I have a secret, I ran it on 4 just to see what the warning was about. In the third mission, a lot of the groups are just straight out Zeus Titans. Not a Hercules in sight. Not even my level 50 scrapper could take on 4-5 of those at a time. Even Crimson was completely annihilated by them. I would either put Hercules Titans into the group, or if they're all Zeus titans because of space limitations, make it all LTs instead. Otherwise, the options for this mission are limited to stealthing it, getting a team, or playing it on heroic.

As for the last mission, I couldn't see any reason not to play it on difficulty 4. Sure the ambushes were big, but given the fact that the mission has 3 elite boss allies who all have some form of buildup, it was a complete cakewalk. Kind of boring for the climax of a story, really.

Final Thoughts
Making the NPC chat less confusing and/or adding a few more clues that offer some more description of things that you overhear the NPCs say would help people understand the story, and the difficulty needs some work in places where it's too hard and others where it's too easy. Otherwise, pretty solid arc.

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Drakule Armageddon 5: This Time, It's Personal!

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So parts 3 and 4 have pre-emptively been retconned out of existence?

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Those two were made by a different director and writer team, and are considered by most fans of the Drakule series to be non-canon due to Drakule's portrayal as a hero.

I've started a thread here for feedback on my story arcs. If you want to take me to task on my own writing (or less likely, lavish praise) then please go there, as I would like to keep this thread as clutter free as possible.

But then, you'll probably all do whatever the hell you want. Bunch of hooligans.

Post your comments and feedback regarding any of my story arcs here.

#51357: Rise of the Drakule

Length: 2 missions
Tags: Ideal for teams, Custom Characters, Comedy
Morality: Neutral

A humor arc that is mainly a parody of vampire movies, video games, and anything else I felt like lampooning at the time. An ancient vampire has arisen, and turning goth kids into his dark army. Doctor Von Heksung has asked for your help. Ridiculousness ensues.

Tagged Ideal for Teams mainly due to the presence of EBs and AVs. If you can solo EBs, feel free to take this mission on solo.

#84543: Return of the Revenge of the Son of Drakule Part 2: First Blood

Length: 3 missions
Tags: Ideal for Team, Custom Characters, Comedy
Morality: Neutral

Like any good bad horror movie franchise, Rise of the Drakule has sequels. Goth subculture and the number of Goth kids are increasing at an alarming rate, and Doctor Von Heksung thinks something sinister is behind it. Once again, it is up to you to save the world from annoying leather clad vampires, and face the technological abomination of nature behind it all!

#257242: Drakule Armageddon 5: This Time, It's Personal!

Length: 4 missions
Tags: Ideal for Teams, Custom Characters, Comedy
Morality: Neutral

Following the events of Return of the Revenge of the Son of Drakule Part 2: First Blood, Drakule again threatens to rise and destroy the world... through you! Again you must team up with Doctor Von Heksung and fight not only Drakule, but the very order sworn to killing him!

#340316: Drakule vs. The Werewolf Bikers From Hell

Length: 3 missions
Tags: Challenging, Ideal for Teams, Comedy
Morality: Neutral

The fourth arc in the Drakule series, the now freelance Doctor Von Heksung has been investigating reports of a werewolf biker gang in the city. He asks you for your help yet again, and leads you into another ridiculous adventure.

#177930: Fighting Freedom

Length: 5 missions
Tags: Solo Friendly, Custom Characters, Drama
Morailty: Villainous

A band of young mutants have banded together to try and throw off the criminal rule in the Rogue Isles. Proving too resourceful for Arachnos to handle conventionally, you have been asked to flush out their leaders and crush them. For compensation, of course.

The last mission of this arc contains an Elite Boss, who you have help with. Should still be soloable by most characters, however.

#257226: 'Tis Nobler in the Mind

Length: 5 missions
Tags: Solo Friendly, Complex Mechanics, Drama
Morality: Heroic

A secretive intelligence officer named Mr. Rutherford has contacted you with information of an Arachnos-developed mind control device. Likely allies become unlikely foes as you unravel the complex web of deception.

Very heavy on the reading. Make sure to read all the clues, otherwise you won't get all of the plot. The last mission may be problematic for some characters, but you are given help. Also, you might think that some of the NPCs you face are AV class. Rest assured, they're bosses. The fourth mission may bug out and have one of the NPCs not spawn. If that's the case, restart the mission and it *should* work.

#379065: Holding Down the Fort

Length: 4 missions
Tags: Challenging, Solo Friendly, Canon Related
Morality: Heroic

The arc I made for Dr. Aeon's second architect challenge. After Lord Recluse uses his Web device to steal the powers of the Freedom Phalanx, the call was put out to the powerful heroes of Paragon City to deal with the threat he now poses. Meanwhile, back in Paragon, only the rookie heroes and the police are left to deal with the chaos that ensues when all the villain groups of the city decide to capitalize on its weakened state.

#384776: Made To Wave the Flag

Length: 5 missions
Tags: Solo Friendly, Drama, Horror
Morality: Heroic

Trapped inside of a Malta facility, you and 4 other heroes must fight against all odds to escape a madman's grasp. A story about duty, loyalty, and what one must sacrifice for the two.

This arc assumes that the player character is a human(oid) character with superpowers. The arc description doesn't state it explicitly, but Malta is the main enemy you'll fight in this arc.

If his posts got pruned, then how would we repeatedly drag him out to be beaten?

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Pff. As long as it's a small map it's no big deal.

[/ QUOTE ]

Anyone who can't handle a kill all in the Midnight Club map fails at life.

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Or the Warehouse Rave map.

Pff. As long as it's a small map it's no big deal.

A Father's Iron Will
Arc ID: 198952
Author: @KemLi
Rating: 2 stars

Quick Version
A plot with some pretty big holes thanks to sparse explanation, the writing needs serious editing, and a couple unfortunate choices in mission design.

Plot Synopsis
The daughter of the leader of an Asian superhero team has been kidnapped, and it's up to you to save her.

Story
First off, I usually give grammar and spelling errors a pass. I've had them in my arcs, in fact, there probably are still some lurking there, waiting for someone to point them out to me. (No, alright doesn't count.)

However, when it starts to hurt the enjoyment of a story, I start to care. Waaaaay too many ellipses. (If you don't know what an ellipsis is, it looks like this: ...) Ellipses should be used very sparingly, only when the character in question pauses mid-sentence, or when you're trying to convey their sentence trailing off. Like, say, a giant robot unexpectedly bursts through a wall making a character is dumbstruck like a deer staring at oncoming headlights, and the only thing he can manage to say is "Holy..."

Nearly every NPC uses one or more ellipses where inappropriate. It kind of gives the impression that all of the characters in the story are high. I started to expect one of the patrol dialogues to go like this:

NPC 1: "Duuuuude... this is some primo stuff..."
NPC 2: "Hey man... hand me some of those cheetos..."

There are also numerous typos and small spelling errors and places where there's no space in between sentences, but the ellipses are the main thing that really need to be fixed with the grammar.

Ok, now that I've gotten that pet peeve out of my system, let's talk plot. We're gonna get kinda spoiler-y here. The first mission feels pretty justified. You're asked to investigate a lead given to you by the PPD to track down the kidnapped girl. However, as far as I can tell, no real evidence was gathered, besides knowing that the girl was kidnapped, which was already known, and that the girl was there but had been moved. To where, I don't know. But apparently a Rikti holo key might have that information? I'm not sure exactly what a holo key is, but presumably it's a key of some sort. I'm not exactly sure how PPD would decode a key and learn where the base is. They may be able to figure out how to deactivate the base's security, but what's the point of that? I have the key.

A side note about the key, there's no real justification given as to why the culprits, who are an Asian crime syndicate, would be holed up in a Rikti base.

There's a janitor at the office building that you're searching, and after you rescue him he says that he heard them talking about blood and power, and that he saw a dragon. The dragon happens to be the boss of the mission, but the blood and power bit doesn't really teach me much.

So to recap, our 3 bits of evidence are: A janitor's babbling about a half-heard conversation about blood and power, the kidnapped girl's pocket watch, and a Rikti key. Few of the clues in my clue window are very descriptive, either. However, the contact apparently is able to put together where the girl has been taken.

Also, she now deems it necessary to tell me about these enemies that I've been fighting. The group was created by the girl's father, an ex-hero who's turned villain, and the group has ties to Arachnos. The girl apparently has been kidnapped because her blood is special somehow, and they're going to do something and then bad things will happen. That's pretty much the extent of the explanation that we're given.

The second mission takes place on the Rikti portal map from the LGTF. Why, I couldn't say. The arc certainly doesn't. Inside are servers that need to be destroyed. Why? Because they're objectives. No explanation is given. The leader doesn't give any explanation of what his plan for his daughter is, or what's so special about her.

Then, my nav window tells me that I need to defeat the true leader. I'm scratching my head at this. The leader did make a reference to a "Master" in his idling dialogue, but didn't really elaborate. Well, whatever. He apparently can split himself, as I had to fight two at once, so maybe this is a copy or something and the real one's up ahead, Nemesis style.

Right style, wrong villain. Apparently Arachnos has been reading Nemesis' playbook, as I run into Black Scorpion out of nowhere, who apparently is the true leader of the Asian crime syndicate. And he wants the girl's blood, apparently. I guess her blood must be awesome. Can't wait to hear more about this blood, and why everyone wants it.

I never do. Not from the girl's mother, Shining Star, who is the aforementioned leader of the Asian superhero team, nor from the girl's captors. The girl, Cynthia, didn't even have a description either, the only custom NPC lacking one aside from the contact. The contact doesn't even tell me what is up with the blood when I complete the mission.

This all combines to make the plot confusing and underwhelming.

Mechanics
The mission is billed as designed for teams, but the tags say solo friendly. It really needs to say either Challenging or Ideal for Teams. I'd put it at challenging. The custom minions and LTs have a lot of build up going around. Thankfully build up only gets super ridiculous at boss level, and from what I could tell, nothing boss or higher had build up or aim.

The minions like to do a lot of bubbling and healing, and the empathy minions have regeneration aura. I cringe to imagine a big team with no debuffers. The elite boss in the first mission had one regeneration on him and I felt like I was trying to solo an AV until it wore off. Minions with regeneration aura, probably something that should be changed.

Speaking of that elite boss, power sink is probably one of the most dickish powers to give to a custom NPC. It's autohit, so essentially you've made a sapper that never misses.

The LTs didn't seem like such a big deal, even though they all seem to have build up. A bunch of them ganging up on you at once could easily overwhelm you. The only ones who really annoyed me were the invulnerability ones, who appeared to have everything except unstoppable. Very annoying to fight, especially for someone who uses S/L damage.

Amazingly, the "leader" was the least annoying custom enemy. He appeared to have robotics on standard, and had regen with none of the crazy powers. Fighting two of them at once wasn't hard in the slightest, and I can see a team easily taking on a huge group of them.

However, the regular custom enemies, I can see being rough on a team. All of the buffers are minions, besides the one who is a boss meaning a lot of them. There's going to be bubbles and RAs flying everywhere, in addition to the boss' defense aura and ice shield from cold domination.

And last but not least, the kidnapped girl is an escort. In the last room of the Rikti portal map. Dragging her back to the door was not fun. Since both Mechano Titan and Black Scorpion spawn before you run into her, there's no reason for her not to just be a captive.

Final Thoughts
Throughout the whole arc I felt like there was no rhyme or reason behind everything that happened. We never learn why the girl is so special, and Black Scorpion leading the custom group comes completely out of left field. Much more explanation is needed.

But then you won't hear excellently written lines about how people are super pissed that hemoblood got on them, and how it's on because of it.



... HEMO MEANS BLOOD ARGH I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE

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I actually think you *may* later on down the road, or there's that inference, but IIRC, it wasn't in the initial screen, which may be the point where a dedicated heroic character makes a choice about whether or not to continue. I can make the other half re-run it with me and take a look if you need a double check.


[/ QUOTE ]
I checked, you're right, the first reference that they are undead is in the enemy descriptions. I've changed up the dialogue and even ended up adding another joke in the process, when I noticed the absurdity of saying that nobody will mind if an undead creature ends up undead. I mean, what is the word for a dead... undead?

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And as for Ashton...I have no clue if this is intended, but I got the mental image of Ashton Kutcher as a vampire...which was a good giggle in and of itself.

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The Ashton Kutcher image is a happy accident. A little confession time. Ashton is a self-insert. Sort of. He's one of the Genin pets on my Ninjas Mastermind, Suburban Ninja. Suburban Ninja was made because of my opinion that the Genin look like kids who think it would be awesome to dress up in ninja costumes made from sweatshirts, but didn't own any black clothes. So I decided to actually make that character.

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Some of humor is understanding the frame of reference, especially if it's parody or satire. (I'm on a kick about that today, for some reason...) Take Mystery Men, for example, which was the movie on my list that my fourth crit partner told me she loathed the absolute most.

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I love Mystery Men. Yeah, it's stupid, but that's part of it's charm.

As for the parody in my arc, I tried to go for the shotgun effect. Parodying the stereotypical goths, vampire movies, video games, all that good stuff. Some of it's pretty obscure. Only one person has gotten the hemoblood reference so far. Then again, that's from a hoooooooorrible movie, so I'm not surprised.

Wow. Somehow I just noticed Lionors' post for the first time. I'll respond to a few things that it said.

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However, if one didn’t get to see the mission listing, there was no way to know it was intended to be humorous until the second meeting with the contact. To be in keeping with the rest of the arc, the contact needs to be as much of a parody as the villains. If he was, the whole thing would be hilarious.

[/ QUOTE ]
I've always felt Von Heksung's dialogue is the most likely to fall flat, mainly because the joke that he only lives to murder vampires is a bit subtle and requires a lot of build up. It's kind of a joke that creeps up as you realize how ridiculous it is. I also feel like I got funnier with writing his dialogue as time went on. In my personal opinion, he's far funnier in the sequel, and even funnier than that in the third part that rests on my hard drive. I need to wait to get my next paycheck until I can spend money on more slots though.

In any case, with I15 he has a description that explains that he REALLY loves to kill Drakule to the exclusion of just about everything else, and I was able to throw another Castlevania reference in there.

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One other note: Ashton refers to his opponents as ‘dude’ and ‘bro’. While ‘dude’ is arguably a unisex term, ‘bro’ really isn’t.

I’m a female gamer and I play female characters, so it really throws me out of immersion when a game or mission refers to all characters as male. Try turning it around to where the game refers to your male character as ‘girlfriend’, or 'girl', and you’ll see what I mean!

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I thought about that when writing it, and have been told similar things by other people who ran through it. All in all, I've decided to leave it. Ashton's stone cold stupid, and probably doesn't even realize that bro is not a proper term for a woman. Personally, I think it's just another level of potential humor.

As an aside, one of the specific instances where someone pointed out things like that, is when one of my friends went through the sequel. His character was a female, and one of Ashton's lines in the sequel is "You're just jealous of all the chicks I'm going to score with this new body!" My response to him was "Ashton's experience with women consists of drunken sorority girls, so he assumes they all love to make out with each other."

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Too, undead and unholy aren’t the same thing. One’s not living and the other’s a matter of religious perspective. To be told to slay a bunch of undead or demonic things is one thing (they’re not alive, after all) but to be told to go slay a bunch of living people this person considers ‘unholy’ is quite another, even in a humorous arc.

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Now that's something. I thought I had stated explicitly that they were in fact undead. I'll have to look through and see if that's something that needs to be fixed.

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Thanks again. One more question though: what could I do to bring this up to a 4 or 5 rating in your opinion?

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Making the third mission less vague would help. I understand wanting people to fight through to find the objective, but Teremex did not stand out one bit thanks to the bosses in the battles.

As far as the Decimator goes, I suppose the allies help more than I thought, but a Decimator at such low levels still seems like it's a bit overkill to me. This may be one of those situations where we're just going to have differing opinions. If you feel like it still needs to be a Decimator, then leave it like that. However, I'm still going to think it's a bad idea.

Getting to a 4 star isn't much of a big deal. Most missions I rate 3 stars were missions that would have been 4 stars except for a few problems I have. I find myself rarely giving out 5 stars, usually those are given out to arcs that make me laugh pretty hard, (by being intentionally funny, so bad it's funny is still bad) arcs that are really well written and use the MA system in interesting ways to portray the story, and arcs that utilize the capabilities of the MA in ways that are really clever and surprise me. Preferably a combination of some of those.

So the question of how to make an arc into a 5 star one? Unfortunately, most arcs that have already been written probably can't be bumped up to my definition of 5 stars from a 3 or 4. My 4 star seems to be most players' 5 star from my experience.

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I run it when i tank hami so that i can look big and strong and so that every1 around me knows that "HOLY $#!? BATMAN - THAT BOULDER MUST BE TANKING HAMI, DONT GO NEAR HIM!!"

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I'd agree with that, except that some of the people who show up to hami raids would never have that thought run through their head.

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"Let's seek shelter behind that boulder that's getting the ever-loving [censored] blasted out of it!"

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One of those things that you'd think someone would never do, but there you have it.

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I run it when i tank hami so that i can look big and strong and so that every1 around me knows that "HOLY $#!? BATMAN - THAT BOULDER MUST BE TANKING HAMI, DONT GO NEAR HIM!!"

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I'd agree with that, except that some of the people who show up to hami raids would never have that thought run through their head.

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2: I honestly cannot wait for him to come out with the rest of this seven-part crapfest. Part 2 is soooo going to be a target for a later review.

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I've played it, and it's not nearly as awesomely bad, unfortunately. Less crazy dialogue and none of the new enemies had any descriptions.

I'm just glad someone else got to experience this. It's truly a kind of unique brand of what the hell.

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B) the player's lack of being able to press the Taunt power button.


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That wouldn't have surprised me in the least, actually. That raid was a mess at the beginning.

I'm still confused why you would have Granite on at a Hamidon raid, though. Hami's attacks deal special damage and are either autohit or have insano accuracy. Granite to me just seems like a waste of end and a self debuff for no benefit. Rooted, obviously, you should have on. Gotta have that status protection.