Madcat_88_NA

Thanks for the review.

TBH, I'm not really sure about your 'just a bunch of stuff that happens' claim - each mission does progress logically on from the next, and the WTF ambush in 3 is forshadowed a bit in the mission text.

Mm... hadn't thought about Annie failing a background check - I just assumed she'd gotten involved with Cinder after starting work with MAGI. If I can add something about that in without it being too clumsy I will.

And Azuria's main concern about Doctor F getting greased is that right now he's their main lead. (Though the failure text allows the story to progress).

As with Talen's review (who also agrees with you on rating), the one thing is that I'm not sure exactly what I could do to improve it. There's no really clear points to work from.

Quick note: Re Blue Caves. They're not randomized - there will be no layer cake.

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Arc 1438 - A Jaunt Into Dataspace
It also puts a face on the Doctor, something I find myself reluctant to enjoy. I kinda like the image of the Doctor as a faceless, remote hacker

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BIG SPOILERS!

The Doctor is dead - she uploaded herself to the crey systems before her death. I always got the impression that when she was alive she was one of the old school computer geniuses - so in her 50s or 60s when she died (doesn't mean that she wasn't hot at some point, just that she was an older lady when she died)

I've managed just over 24 hours on the front page with my 2nd arc, which was rather cool.

However, I figure 3 plus is good, and whilst the comments are great for my fragile little ego, I would really like to hear from the people who one and two starred - so I can decide if their concerns are things I want to address or not.

For instance, I had an arc two starred because it didn't contain custom mobs except for bosses, and the reviewer didn't consider the buckets of patrol text or any of the story stuff important. In that case, I decided that that wasn't a concern I wanted to address for that mission - he clearly isn't part of my target audience.

What do I mean by that?

A mob set to Unique would only spawn when specifically called by a boss, captive or escort detail.

This would mean that you don't need to either set named bosses to AVs or segregate them into a second group to stop them spawning all over the place.

Is that the case? Thought they were because I got the 100 one.

Still a more detailed star break down would be useful.

Yeah, it's annoying to have to remember to copy the chat channel if you want to keep your comments.

It would be nice to be able to see a breakdown of our star ratings, the way that Amazon does with their book reviews.

This would let authors know if people just didn't like their arcs or if they got visited by the 1 and 0 star bandits. (Not that there aren't perfectly good reasons for 1 and 0 starring, but if you can see that the highs are freak spikes rather than the lows it would be helpful)

Or at least let us see how many total stars each arc has earnt.

Asking, because one of mine at 85 ratings and a 4* average should have netted ~340 stars, but I haven't had the 250* badge, so there's obviously something odd going on.

A few of the ones I've played and enjoyed

#3474 - Old Habits die hard
Villains

A bank robbery goes embarassingly wrong, hilarity ensues. I like the NPC and there's a very clever encounter in the first mission. Also, it's short.

#27952 - The Great Cake Robbery
Heroic

An investigation into abakery break in reveals a robbery of gastronomic excess! (Comedy arc, UK skewed humour)

#71797 The Gorgon Maneuver
- Competantly put together TF style arc involving the snakes. High points are the map choices. Few issues, but one of them (ninjitsu has apparently been sorted).

#1356 - This is war Part 1 - the revenge of Hro'Dothz
Neutral

Follow up to the the LGTF, better for villains or morally ambigous heroes. Very hard but not unfair. All standard enemies, nicely written NPCs.

80210 - SIC Stories: The Furian device
Set as Neutral, but more heroic

(Non-canon and non-serious, well written, good custom mobs. )

Join the General Initiative Justification of Ordnance and Elimination in foiling the SIC attempt to use the Furian device

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I make it fit by taking out the BRs and putting in paragraph breaks. I'll see what I can do though.

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Did not realise it recognised Ps as well as BRs - nice.

Sorry to hijack again, but I think that the final tweak is done.

Fixed the mainframe spawning by getting rid of the defeat condition - win win situation. Also fixed minor typo in some defeat text and changed Mimi to be a natural Leut in keeping with the other NPCs (so the only bosses that may be seen at this point are the standard ones if someone has upped their difficulty which is fairly rare in the lower levels).

I wasn't keen on Hunting the Dark Dragon at all - in fact didn't finish because of Ninjitsu, but really did like This is war.

It's very hard but not unfair (soloed on diff 2 with a 50 plant/energy dominator (+1 Shivan for Hro'Dtohz himself), would be good content for a SG night out. Fits cleanly into canon.

I originally thought that Lady Grey was written a bit too pompously, but checking her speech on Paragon wiki shows that she was spot on.

Didn't find the Malta in the Serpent Drummer mission until I was on my way out. The suprise when you're fighting Dra'gon is most appreciated though.

Only one of the horsemen I had issues with was Famine, but took him out by pulling him to one of the Malta groups and let them do most of the heavy lifting. (And yes, I did find the suprise).

It's intended for villains but 68054 - Out of the gutters seems to have gone down rather well.

2409 is playable by lowbies, but really intended for mid-teens.

Have added a patrol and additional boss to mission 3 and made both bosses non-required (though you'll probably encounter them en-route to the objectives anyway)

Fixed an error in the souvenier.

Mission 2 will get looked at tonight.

Silverage - yep, I've asked Scholarman to have a look at it too, but he's got MAGI in his queue first.

I am going to look at yours and the Alika one as I have a Widow I'm trying to level up through MA only, and finding non-farm arcs for lowbies is tough.

Edit: Have fixed level ranges in mission three as suggested, and used a random Longbow boss to open up 4's

More complex stuff like patrols will wait until I'm not half-asleep.

Wow, thank you.

Noted on the level ranges will see what I can do about them. Have corrected The Bad Sectors and Centre.

2 requires a defeat in the last room only (where the mainframe is supposed to spawn, where the mainframe spawned every single test run, but where it seems to refuse to spawn in live), but will see if I can get it to behave more predictably, and if so, change it to be the Claim condition. *

Mission 3 - Noted re: patrols. In my other arc that's for general consumption I went very patrol heavy so that I could have lots of chatter, don't know why I didn't this time, will add some - as you said, they should really be talking about the alarm at least.

Mission 4 bugs me a little bit too - we just have so few details available in the map used, but warehouse maps are too messy for what I wanted to do.

* Actually, looking at the mission, this may be to do with their listing order. Will try to get it working properly again on my local version before playing with the live one.

Hi, I've already asked the guy doing lowbie arcs to have a look at this one, but would love a second opinion.

Arc Name: Out of the gutters
Arc ID: 68054
Faction: Villainous
Creator: @Madcat 88
Difficulty levels Easy - Medium. No bosses, but designed for lowbies. Has a leut with status effects.

Synopsis

Left for dead after your neighbourhood was trashed in a running battle between Arachnos, Longbow and a pack of destined ones, you dragged yourself out of the rubble and swore that you were through with being a victim.

Notes: This arc is designed as an alternative start for villains, it'll get a character from level 1 to level 3 or 4.

Thank you for taking the time to play it and for the review - much appreciated.

Said this in tells, but replying for the benefit of the thread.

The idea of the arc was to turn the player trope around - it's not Azuria's fault that stuff goes missing; she is competent and does take her job seriously - I'm sure that people have done LOLAzuria arcs, but that wasn't my intention.

On the NPCs, you're quite right - they're all created for the arc as I figure that characters are only really interesting in the context that they've been created for - anyone who does tabletop RPing will know the dread that the words, 'Let me tell you about my character' inspires when uttered by a stranger, so my own characters will be making appearances in stuff made for the groups they're in (34734 for example - not a review request), but very rarely otherwise.

I am, as you noticed, a huge fan of patrols because they can talk and make the map feel more dynamic, and I'm glad that that worked as intended.

re: Wondering were all the effort went after the early game arcs - that's true of the official content in a way. Levels 1-5 have nice custom maps and so on, then you mostly just see the same scenary over and over again.

Without spoilers, did you suceed or fail at mission 3?

Yes, the vault is in Galaxy - hence the reference to the warehouse being right under MAGI's noses.

Composing reply to review atm.

Well, I'd appreciate an indepth review of the arc in my sig, 2409. It is geared for heroes and lower level characters, so I understand if it's not what you might want to play right now going by your opening post.

Are you taking requests?

Jake - interesting.

I too was less than impressed with the brew arc, but didn't think anything else of my my communication with the author, but an arc that had been doing well suddenly dropped to 4 stars and hasn't recovered despite receiving a few known 5 stars since.

He also sent me a 5 star solicitation to review his arc for an arc that's pretty much for my SG only. (It's not bad, it just doesn't make as much sense as it should if you don't know the SG lore behind it, so I'd say three tops for a stranger playing it.)

Hi Venture, I'm feeling incredibly brave, so when you have time, I'd appreciate you having a look at 2409 - Mystery of the MAGI vault

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What about the boots and the frockcoats? Are they available for female characters?

Could we have some classy rather than skanky options please?

Arc Name: The Mystery of the MAGI vaults
Arc ID: 2409

Difficulty level: 2 EBs, one boss in seperate missions. Have completed with both very low characters and exemped highbies.

Faction: Heroic

Synopsis: Tired of being blamed for losing artifacts from the vaults, Azuria has contacted you to help her clear her name.

Length: 30 minutes - one hour.

Cry Wolf

Arc ID: 17198
Length: Short - One 30 minute timed mission
Morality: Villainous
Enemies: Freakshow, custom group
Description: Attacked whilst delivering food to the slums of St Martial, Westin Phipps is in need of rescue. Luckily for him, Arachnos are paying well for a quick and quiet job.

Difficulty: Difficult. (3 EBs, time limit, ambushes, patrols)

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