LaserJesus

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One can hope that whatever Karma mechanic they come up with will put as much value on ideological good and evil as it will on common acts of benevolence or cruelty, and would also differentiate between malice and evil vision.

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From the way they're making it sound, the alignment system sounds like it will be based off of certain missions. That sounds to me like it's not going to be like some games where if you kill a guy you get evil points, but if you let him live, you get good points, repeat ad nauseum. My wild speculation is that Praetorian Earth is going to essentially be a huge co-op area, and anyone can do any mission. Doing "evil" missions turns your alignment towards evil, and doing "good" missions will turn your alignment towards good.

My major hope is that they don't make the same mistake that most games make, where the choices are always between being Jesus and being Charles Manson. I'm hoping that there's a gray area with some real moral dilemmas to choose between.

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No need to worry, for I do have SO's now (see my earlier "progress" posts). I'll add your arc to the queue as soon as it's published. I've already added General Zod's ... er I mean Geek_Boy's.

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Yeah, the only thing you really need to worry about is the EB at the end. He hits like a truck.

Well, on Sunday I'm publishing an arc that's 21-30. Not sure how well you'll do without SOs, as the arc relies rather heavily on custom enemies. Nothing too hard in there, though.

I'm going to opt out, as most of the time I'm just sitting in AE anyhow.

I'm always looking to fine tune the difficulty of my custom enemies, as the main point of the challenge is supposed to be the AVs, and not the custom enemies. Well, maybe the bosses are a tad difficult. From what you're saying though, the ranged attacks hitting a lot seem to be similar to my experiences of fighting custom enemies as an SR scrapper. I believe they have a higher base accuracy than normal critters.

The arc is definitely more focused for high level characters, but the notice actually doesn't recommend not to play it at levels 1-4, it actually flat out says not to, and there's a very good reason for that. The AV that spawns in the first mission uses a custom group built from canon enemies, including every single undead enemy, and the praetorian shadow monsters for fun. (I really like those little shadow imps for some reason.) There are no true undead from 1-4, as I don't count Vahzilok zombies as true undead, and neither does the game. So what will happen at levels 1-4, is that the AV will spawn surrounded by nothing but copies of himself. Which would be very bad.

As far as the difficulty of the final AV, him being that difficult is purely by design. I've actually toned him down a few times. He used to be on extreme dark armor, just for a "gotcha" moment as he uses soul transfer, but then I realized that he would have mez protection, so I turned it down to hard. The biggest thing you have to worry about with him is the dark regen. Ironically, your Grav/Storm controller probably wouldn't have had many problems with him due to the debuffs and the holds preventing him from using it very often.

Perhaps I can make it more clear in the description that the arc is meant to be challenging. I'll see what I can do.

Thanks for the review, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!

EDIT: I actually looked over the final AV again, and I hadn't noticed that Power Boost apparently was put on hard difficulty in Energy Assault. That was probably making him harder than he should have been, since his healing, and I think even resistance was being buffed by it. I put him on standard, which should make him a bit easier.

As for mission 3, it's not so much the problem of "Oh dear, I have to search for something, whatever will I do," the problem is that so much stuff is going on that it's incredibly hard to find Grave Dancer. You've got ghosts floating in giant green fires, you've got numerous destructible objects sitting around everywhere, etc. The only clue as to Grave Dancers' location is that he is surrounded by drummers. I'd suggest giving his surrounding foes a more obvious animation, one with graphical effects.

For difficulty, I was playing on challenge level 4, as my scrapper is fairly powerful. The stacking of dark miasma was coming from the LTs, which is bad enough.

As for the dialogue, the problem is a lack of emotion. At some places this is because the dialogue seems stilted due to short sentences, other times it's due to wrong choice of or lack of punctuation. I said myself in my review that it's hard for me to say how to fix something like this, as me fixing it for you would become me writing your arc for you.

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Manoa and Arwen Thanks for the info it makes sense.

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Don't forget LJ (Jesus, not Judas ).

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Well that's a fine how-do-you-do.

Hrmp.

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Pfft, if you still played people would be messing up our names all of the time.

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For the longest time, I thought LaserJudas was originally LaserJesus, who was forced to change their name because a GM/moderator deemed it offensive. I remember the first time I saw both of you participating in a conversation in one of the global channels at the same time.

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I have amazingly gotten away with this name for 4 and a half years. I guess I just haven't pissed off any moderators enough.

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If people just started to act crazy, everone else would ask why and look for a reason. Are they trying to be funny? Do they want to be destructive? Are they trying to be heroes. You tell them that they just are, it ends up being a hard thing to swallow. Anyone harmed by such an event from that point forward would take it serious should something simlar happen again.

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There's another problem here though, that in order for something to be truly chaotic, there should be little semblance of pattern. At one moment, sure, things might be wacky. However, there's really no break from that pattern. While at one moment you should have mentions of plastic forks or monsters that moo, there should also be all other sorts of things, crazy and even mundane. Like maybe randomly in one of the Oranbega missions you run into a battle between Family thugs and Soldiers of Rularuu. Later on in the mission, there's a captive set to single, so he's completely alone, but he's reading a newspaper and comments on the most recent headline.

Those are just things off the top of my head, and not me saying that you should do those specific things. But hopefully you understand my point. Chaos isn't defined by insanity, cartoonish or serious. It's defined by a lack of a pattern. Things need to be mixed up a lot more. If people complain that there seems to be no reason or pattern to the things that are occurring, well, then they're pretty stupid for not realizing that the arc is called Facing Chaos, and that it's not a figurative chaos being faced but an actual force that is invading the world.

Hey, why not? Sounds fun to me.

Arc offered to which character?: Silent Spy, Edwin Schmidt
Arc Name: 'Tis Nobler in the Mind
Arc ID: 5260
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: @LaserJesus
Level Range: 46-50
Soloable?: For the most part, yes. Gravity controller might have a bit of a problem with the last mission, but there are allies to help.
Length: 5 missions
Difficulty Level: Moderate to Hard, depending on AT
Synopsis: A man named Mr. Rutherford claiming to be from a classified intelligence agency has evidence of an Arachnos developed hypnosis device, and needs your help to stop their plans for it.
Estimated Time to Play: 30-45 minutes.

Be warned, it's rather reading intensive. A lot of clues to read to get the full story.

Also, this arc's only going to be up until next Sunday, when I will start rotating arcs. Damn my love of making arcs and the severely limited space to put them in!

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Actualy... if you stay away from her.. her primary in AV form is Assualt Rifile... her secondary is Maniuplation.

The thing with Chaos is you arn't dealing world destroyer type but bat *blip* insain unstable Chaos. There is no logic to how it operates. Only that it's mere existance desablizes everything on the world until it can no londer support itself.


The first guy is Assualt Rifile Sonic Res

Then you have the cult leader which is Fire Control /Fire maniuplation. His shadows which... I honestly forget what one of the sets is but secondary and strongest being dual blades... You are the first person to guess the Fire Melee/Ice Melee correctly to my surprising.

The Dragon is Fireblast invulnerablilty.

I wasn't aiming for 'serious' Chaos but pure unstable chaos.. not exactly an easy thing to do. I actualy resisted the urge to have monsters speak over intelligently then bust into angery growls and roars.

You kind of realized it, Chaos doesn't seem serious even though its a threat.

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I must have mistaken subdue for a regular psychic blast. Well, she never pulled out her assault rifle then.

I also must have mistaken the bosses in the third mission for the first guy. Now that you mention it, I do remember him having the sonic bubble, but I think I had him knocked around too long for him to pull out his gun.

My main problem isn't the fact that the Chaos isn't serious, moreso the fact that it's over the top silliness doesn't mesh with the King's dialogue and makes the theme really muddled. My main problem is more with some of the later custom enemies than with the story, really.

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I'm frankly not aware of this supposed army that Venture has. Where do I get my own army? That'd be pretty awesome.

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I know if I had an army I'd be doing more important stuff with them than one starring bad arcs.

Like invading Canada!

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I'd sign up for that army. I'm sick of their geese.

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I don't care what the term is. It's just an excuse for Venture and his followers to grief the ratings.

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One person not liking your arc and giving it a low rating isn't griefing. It's one person not liking your arc and SHOCK! giving it a low rating because of it.

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Not every person on here has enough sycophant brownshirt followers to sink an arc either.

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I'm frankly not aware of this supposed army that Venture has. Where do I get my own army? That'd be pretty awesome.

Arc #105163: Facing Chaos
Rating: 1 star
The short of it: Incredibly mixed themes, crazy being mistaken for "acting wacky", annoying usage of canon mobs, and overpowered custom mobs

Plot Overview

King Odilian has come from the Realm of Dragons to warn our world of impending danger from a being called Chaos. Chaos destroyed Odilian's home dimension, and he seeks to prevent it from doing the same to ours. He informs you of a Circle of Thorns sect that may be worshipping the Chaos, and sends you there to confirm it. Inside, you discover that not the cult's worshippers are more than just Circle of Thorns members, and they are being led by a man named Riki Tiki Tally, who is a servant of Chaos. With Odilian's fears confirmed, he contacts Longbow with the information, and discovers that some of the Longbow soldiers have wandered off, much like his soldiers did back on his planet. Fearing the worst, he sends you after them. The Longbow have in fact been taken over by Chaos, and one of them has been transformed into a monster, which you subdue.

Next Odilian sends you to stop the Cult of Chaos. Their leader, Arch-Mage Chronas, is protected by shadow copies of himself and more people who have been transformed into monsters by Chaos. After Chronas is defeated by your hand, Chaos takes his soul as punishment. Next you must go and fight Chaos' manifestation in this world. Longbow has them contained, but they won't be able to defeat them. Once inside, you face Rip Van Twinkle, the manifestation of Chaos. After you defeat her, she turns into light and goes deeper into the caves. After battling her two guard beasts, you face another, more powerful version of her. After coming out victorious against her the second time, Chaos leaves this dimension and everything returns to normal. King Odilian presents you with the Phoenix Crest from his dimension as thanks.

Mechanics

The first mission is an Oranbega map, with a single defeat boss as your only objective. I believe he was Dual Blades/Something. He died really quickly to me and spent pretty much the whole fight being thrown around by my Scrapper's knockdown and knockup, so that means that he's more or less a standard boss. The custom group for this mission consisted of humanoid Circle of Thorns members and the Mu enemies from Arachnos, at least at level 50. I didn't test it at any other levels, for reasons I will explain shortly.

The second mission was one of the office/caves maps. There are a few non-essential captives, the only required objective is a custom boss, who is fiery assault, on at least hard, as he had fiery embrace. I'm unsure of the secondary, as again, he died rather quickly. This is one of the reasons why I didn't take anyone of lower level. Double damage is something my level 50 SR scrapper can handle, as he'll more or less dodge all the attacks. Any of my lower level characters, not so much. The arc is billed as a 41+ arc anyhow by the description.

The third mission takes place on another Oranbega map. There are multiple non-essential destroy objects in the mission, and multiple bosses, both of the custom boss that was in the last mission, and a new one. I wish I could remember the powersets of this boss or the elite boss at the end, but I cannot. This mission also has a custom group consisting of some of my least favorite enemies to fight in the game. No, no sappers. No, no carnies. I actually don't mind those. In this custom group, we have warwolves, who are annoyingly fast and hit rather hard, hydra, who have high toxic damage spit with -fly that give out reduced XP, devouring earth rock monsters, including the LT that summons the resistance aura, arachnoids, yet more toxic damage, and elder vipers, who admittedly aren't that bad.

Also, the contact says there is an ally in the mission, but I never saw her. Admittedly, it's an Oranbega map, so she may have been tucked in some corner. In any case, I couldn't tell you what the ally was. According to the contact dialogue, likely either empathy or pain domination.

The fourth and final mission takes place on the custom infernal map. The main enemy is again the custom group from the last one, with patrols that seem to consist of only ghosts from the portal missions and Rularuu wisps. The first boss you run into is an elite boss, who is Claws/Martial Arts. I don't think Martial arts is on hard, as I didn't see a build up, and I'm not sure if the dual blades is on hard. If it was, follow up never hit me. Regardless, be prepared to be hit with shuriken from an EB, the single highest damaging attack you can give a custom enemy at level 50 outside of nova type powers, (I'm not making this up. It outdamages headsplitter and even full auto.) in addition to both eagles claw and eviscerate.

The next two bosses that are triggered by her defeat are both Fire Melee/Ice Melee, both on at least hard, meaning two build ups. Granted I only ever saw them use one, so the system may be smart enough to ignore redundant powers. If that's the case, thank god. However, they still hit like a truck. If you can't keep them off their feet, or don't have knockback protection (they have ice patch) you will be hit hard. Very hard.

After defeating them, it spawns a custom AV in the final room, who is Psychic Blast/Psychic Manipulation. Psychic Manipulation is on extreme, so it really doesn't matter what psychic blast is on. I just know I didn't see a psychic wail. What psychic manipulation on extreme means, is that any character that comes within melee range will be standing in a confusion aura. Thank god SR has confuse resistance. It also means that she has build up, and mind probe, and a really powerful damage scale to go with them. Now, granted, the contact does say to get teammates, but will it really matter? Most tanks and brutes A: Do not have confuse resistance, so will turn on the team and be unable to tank her properly unless there is a teammate who can give them confuse resistance, and B: doesn't have psychic resistance, so will be obliterated very quickly by the insanely high psychic damage, and the rest of the team will follow suit shortly.

Story

The themes are practically bi-polar. King Odilian tells stories about the atrocities that his world has suffered, and is distraught over the family and countrymen who he lost in his losing fight against Chaos. When he finds out that the monsters are actually humans who are transformed, he wonders if his countrymen can ever forgive him for killing them after they had transformed.

On the other hand, the Chaos is Saturday morning cartoon silly. The monsters moo. Constantly. The Cult of Chaos exclaims that they were shocked that making sacrifices to plastic forks worked. In the second mission, there is a random hot dog vendor who breaks the fourth wall just for comedic purposes. The vendor even says that she has nothing to do with the mission.

The two styles clashed very badly for me. It's fine if you want things to be wacky, but don't have it in the same place as serious monologues about loss and suffering. I'm not saying that a serious tale can't have some comic relief, but there's a difference between comic relief and a Bugs Bunny cartoon. The arc tries to be a comedy arc and a serious arc at the same time, and fails at both.

Final Thoughts

Some of the custom enemies are just way too strong, and the plot needs to decide what tone it's going for.

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I don't care what the term is. It's just an excuse for Venture and his followers to grief the ratings.

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One person not liking your arc and giving it a low rating isn't griefing. It's one person not liking your arc and SHOCK! giving it a low rating because of it.

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Oh, and I'll mention something else. All my minions were intended to have Assault Rifle and a melee power set. The Japanese got Martial Arts. There was nothing for me to give the Germans or Americans! Martial Arts was inappropriate, and things like Dark Melee had inappropriate powers or effects (darkness, Hurl and so on). How about a basic Brawling power set?

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I would really like to see some "generic" mob powersets that aren't clones of PC powersets. There are tons of (fairly) reasonable examples out there,especially among low-level mobs who combine some sort of pistol or assault rifle with some kind of punching or pistol whipping.

I find it limiting that all custom NPCs have to be "PCs-lite" in the case of minions, or near or trans-PC power for LTs and up.

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I agree. If you want your minions to have blast sets, but not annoying secondary effects that stack up like crazy, you pretty much are limited to assault rifle and fire blast. Maybe radiation blast to a lesser extent, as defense debuffs aren't that big of a deal since anyone who uses defense to stay alive has resistance to defense debuffs.

Arc #92630: I Will Dance On Your Grave
Rating: 3 stars
The short of it: Some of the custom enemies are well balanced, others are annoying, NPC text seems lackluster, a lot of outdoor maps

Plot Overview

A voodoun priestess named Bone Caster has come to you to ask for help. A Bocor named Grave Dancer has taken control of a group of Skulls and is collecting civilians for a sacrifice to make a deal with Baron Samedi. He has granted the Skulls dark powers, and have even transformed some of them into cannibalistic ghouls by having loa possess them. The police are powerless to stop him, so it is up to you to take to the streets and save the helpless citizens. On the streets, you are able to rescue 8 of the citizens, a few of whom are police officers. One of the cops is being possessed by Grave Dancer himself, who tells you that you are too late, and that he already has enough sacrifices to enter the spirit world and make a deal with Baron Samedi.

When you return, Bone Caster says that she has consulted the bones, and that they have told her that Grave Dancer has taken his victims to a hospital, a place of death, to make the sacrifice. You rush there and save the civilians that were still alive, but again Grave Dancer possesses one of the doctors there and tells you that he has already gone to the spirit world to make the deal. Bone Caster is too weak to send you to the spirit world herself, but knows a Native American shaman named Sun Dancer who can take you there. Once in the spirit world, you and Sun Dancer defeat the spirit form of Grave Dancer, who has already made the deal with Baron Samedi for power.

Bone Caster apologizes for being unable to send you there sooner when you return, and tells you that Grave Dancer is at a graveyard summoning his zombie army, and that Sun Dancer has gone ahead. The two of you defeat Grave Dancer and end his dark schemes for good.

Mechanics

I really am not a fan of the map choices in this arc, but that's my personal hatred for outdoor missions. The first, third, and fourth missions are all on outdoor maps, some more annoying than others.

The first mission takes place in the outdoor city map with the graveyard. The standard enemies are the custom skull enemies, who range from the minions who are mace/? and the lieutenants who are dark melee/regen. I did not see the boss rank enemy of the Skull Initiates. All of the patrols, and the enemies surrounding the hostages and the optional bosses are all Bloodthirsty Ghouls, who are also mace/?. Possibly regen on standard, which doesn't have any visual effects. The optional bosses are either Pack Masters, who appear to be Electricity Assault/Pain Domination, and Grave Danger, who was either electric melee or electric assault. he died very fast, so I didn't get a really good chance to check his powers. There are 8 innocents to rescue, two of which are allies and one of which is a "boss", though they are all custom LT police officers, who are also Mace/some secondary I can't tell.

The second mission takes place on the asylum map, which is kind of annoying due to the random clutter everywhere. Skull Initiates are the majority of the enemies in here, guarding all of the 4 captives you need to rescue. You also meet the Skull Summoners here, guarding the altar that you need to destroy. They all seem to be Necromancy/Dark Miasma, both the minions and the Lts.

The third mission takes place on the circular graveyard map with the crypt in the middle. There is a ridiculous amount of optional objectives on this map, including captives with no guards, and a ton of destructible objects. First you need to find Sun Dancer, who is a fire controller with a secondary that I could not tell. After you do, you have to find and defeat Grave Dancer, a difficult task on a large map with a crazy amount of things going on, especially since he looks a lot like the Skull Summoner LTs. (Hint: his spawn is beating on drums) He is necromancy, standard it seems, and willpower set to hard, so even though he's a boss, be prepared for a long fight.

The fourth mission is thankfully simple even though it takes place on the other graveyard map. Sun Dancer is there, but set to single and not required, and Grave Dancer is relatively easy to find.

I have to say that the Skull Summoners are particularly annoying. They are all necromancy, even the minions. It's pretty much like fighting a bunch of Rikti Communications Officers, except you can't interrupt them, and they have a ton of -tohit powers. Sun Dancer was practically always useless, being swarmed by zombies and fighting them instead of anything actually important. I would suggest making the Summoner Zombies something else other than Necromancy. Minions with mastermind powers are always a headache. I also suggest putting Grave Dancer on standard willpower if he absolutely needs to be willpower. Rise to the Challenge gives a ridiculous regen boost.

Story

The plot's alright, though I did start to get annoyed at the end with the constant "You're too late! *evil cackle*" style of mission progression. The character dialogue did not leave any kind of impression on me. You remember in high school when the teacher would call on people to read something out of the book and they really didn't want to? How they would read it like a robot? That's how all of the characters sounded in my mind. Unfortunately I can't really give any kind of specific advice to fix this problem without taking more creative control over your arc than is my place to do. Bone Caster and Grave Dancer's dialogue being written out with a Caribbean accent was a nice touch though. Still, they sounded incredibly flat in my mind.

Final Thoughts

Even though the dialogue isn't stellar, and it has some annoying enemies and in my opinion annoying maps, it wasn't a chore to play, and I had some genuine fun with it. It's not an arc that I would say "Go play this now", but I definitely wouldn't suggest against it either.

Yeah, you can imagine my shock that my SR scrapper with quickness was moving at an inch per second due to the gravity powers and the siphon speeds

Considering that we only get 3 arc slots, dev's choice and hall of fame notwithstanding, and the fact that I enjoy making arcs probably far too much, I've decided to start using one of my slots to rotate out arcs by the week.

I will put a new one up every Sunday and make a post here detailing the new arc. Feel free to leave comments about the arc.

Story arc for the week of May 10, 2009

Arc #5260: 'Tis Nobler in the Mind
Alignment: Heroic
Suggested levels: 46-50
Difficulty: I would probably say moderate to hard if you're playing solo. While there's only one EB and one AV, (though it will seem like there's 4 AVs, I assure you, besides the fact that they have purple triangles, they are in fact bosses and will still be bosses on a team of 8.) some of the fights can be rough for some solo characters.

Description: The mysterious Mr. Rutherford has contacted you with information regarding a hypnosis device that Arachnos has developed. Can he be trusted? Can you afford not to trust him?

The story arc primarily has you face Arachnos, with some custom bosses and a custom enemy group, which I have done extensive testing on and hopefully should be well balanced.

I found the arc to be pretty amusing, and for the most part, pretty solid. The only thing I really have to note is that in the last mission, the AV spawned right next to a battle for me. Made for an... um... "interesting" fight, especially as an ambush had also caught up to me right at that moment. Thankfully, my Scrapper generally has no problems with situations like that, being level 50 and SR. Elude's a wonderful thing.

My suggestion I guess would be that if your battles are set to spawn at "any", to switch them to spawn at "middle" to try and prevent this situation.

If you're looking for more of a... um... "B" movie arc, my Drakule arcs in the sig are basically all about killing vampires. However, they're also quite challenging, so I don't think you could solo it at 15.

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Arranged in alphabetical order for fairness and ease of use:
Bayani
Beach_Lifeguard
Bubbawheat (QPQ)
Burning_Brawler (QPQ)
DeviousMe (QPQ)
Dominemisis (QPQ)
Dragonslay
Frozen_Northman (QPQ)
HolyEvilAoD
Lazarus (QPQ)
LaserJesus
Misho (QPQ)
Peacemoon (QPQ)
Policewoman (QPQ)
Rapulis
ridiculous_girl (QPQ)
Sooner (QPQ)
Stomphoof (QPQ)
Talen_Lee
Venture

EU reviewers
Col.Blitzkrieger
Leese
Master_Zaprobo (In character)

Review sites
CoH Mission Review
Mission Architect Advanced Search Site

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.

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Added myself to the list even though I am doing my reviews in the same thread as Venture's. The link leads to where I start my reviews. Convenient, no?

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Manoa and Arwen Thanks for the info it makes sense.

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Don't forget LJ (Jesus, not Judas ).

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Well that's a fine how-do-you-do.

Hrmp.

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Pfft, if you still played people would be messing up our names all of the time.

No rush. Any feedback at all is appreciated. Most people run through an arc and don't leave any feedback whatsoever.

I've been thinking about it, and if you want to put up a review of Rise of the Drakule, ridiculous_girl, feel free. The reason why I initially said no is because I felt that since I didn't specifically put it up for review, that it would be unfair or some crap. I've since realized that reasoning is stupid. I'll play through one of your arcs as per the rules if you want to type up a review of it.

I've always just edited the creature and group files by hand, but then I'm obtuse like that.