Mind Forever Burning

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No, you're harvesting resources in your own present to send agents into the past. You can direct all of them to the same time, forever (for low values of 'forever').

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Oh, I see, your trying to Loop Resources.

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I think you're entirely missing the point, which is that whoever possesses time travel can throw an infinitely regenerable army at whatever critical event they choose. If the first 100 agents you sent couldn't get the job done, send another 1000. Or 10,000. Or 1,000,000. The fact that it takes a century to train and dispatch 1000 agents doesn't matter because they all end up at the same destination. If the event is important enough to the possessors of time travel, they will eventually pile enough of their side onto it to win.

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Actually what I was always wondering is why custom enemies got WAY more exp than regular ones in the first place?

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They didn't. What gave you that idea?

1) Create a custom faction that contains all lieutenants, or all bosses.
2) Glowies don't award anything, but you can use them to control when a mission ends, which affects mission bonus tickets. Other than that they are purely story telling devices.

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Think I could charge 50m? 75m? 100m?

You think there would be more interest in less money for level 22ish?

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Good question. I think people paid 1-3M per farm run on pre-MA farms, so maybe you could use that for a benchmark. I think it would probably take 10-15 farms to hit level 35 in that scenario if you had a good bridge, longer otherwise. Those are totally off the cuff numbers though.

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Played with Smurphy this afternoon. It was a blast. A fire blast, that is - followed by a footstomp, and fire cages, and some rains of fire.

I died a lot, but my god did those bosses melt.

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#2622: A Tangle in Time
#119228: hero therapy (TM)

Arc #1152, "The Doctor Returns"
tl;dr: 4 stars
Pros: Intriguing plot, Did the Research
Cons: Some sub-plots could be tightened up, lackluster gameplay (no custom factions)

Reviewed: 6/6/2009
Level range: 30-54
Character used: lvl 49 nin/nin stalker

I almost didn't review this arc once I saw what it was about, because I'm developing an arc that has some of the same themes. Because of that, I may have specific ideas about what an arc dealing with the Mission Architect as canon should do. Keep that in mind as I give the review.

As the arc begins, you're contacted by The Doctor, the (literally) disembodied hacker from the Gordon Stacy arcs. She has evidence that Crey is using the Architect for sinister purposes (surprise, surprise) - specifically, re-instantiating heroes as clones when they leave the system, keeping the originals only as backed-up copies. The newly cloned versions are loyal to Crey, so if this isn't stopped - well, you get the idea.

The Doctor sends you into a simulation where the copying/cloning is in progress so you can see for yourself. The map is a Council warehouse, and you discover Fusionette, who's a little confused to see you, plus four clones of Fusionette, whom the original helps you delete. The dialog is cute, and well done. Depending on how quickly you grasp the fact that each of the copies thinks themselves to be the original, the combat can seem pretty disturbing. After exiting you don't see Fusionette anymore and wonder what happened to her.

Now that you're convinced, The Doctor would like to grant you administrator privileges so you can be more effective in the fight. This consists of a crawl through an office-to-caves map called "Testing 4 bugz" filled with Arachnoids, an obvious spoof on poorly done MA arcs, which you can mostly ignore if you choose and just go for the glowy. If you want to fight, there is an ally in the form of Executable Number 6, a reference to the Gordon Stacy arcs, which I thought was a nice touch.

As an aside, the technique of hiding the privilege elevation command in what looks like a bad throwaway arc mirrors The Doctor contacting you in emails designed to look like spam - it's all done to fool Big Brother into ignoring the content. Personally, I'm not sure it's the best approach for flying under the radar (spam gets flagged and examined IRL, for example), but I give the author props for using it consistently.

Act Three sends you into the system to free some supers, now that your administrator privileges allow you to move around without being tracked. This is a sewer map full of Freaks (about which, more later). The supers involved include Fusionette, who apparently you didn't really save in Act One (one of my nits), and Faultline, who got worried after Fusionette stood him up on a date. You also find Ghost Widow, the significance of whose presence is intriguing but never quite resolved. Another nit: your character chooses to delete the copy rather than risk being wrong about copies and originals and having two GWs loose in the world... but this is a neutral arc, so it's not clear that would be bad, plus even a hero would probably free GW on principle. Finally, you rescue Positron, who was copied and cloned during his original tour of the Crey facility, the one where he was "convinced" the AE was safe. So there's one giant plot-hole inherent in the AE deftly resolved.

In addition to the rescues, you have to defeat the Network Administrator, a noise tank hired by Crey to beef up their tech security (which explains the whole premise of the map). He's got some good lines and PMs you in the mission exit dialog, another nice touch.

Act Four has you uploading The Doctor directly into the AE central system. This is a 60-minute timed mission against Crey on a tech map. You need to identify the correct terminal node out of a dozen or so red herrings, some of which bring ambushes of Paragon Protector minions. The ambushes are rather hard, and there are regular Crey patrols around as well; my def-capped stalker had no problems but squishies might get in trouble. Other than that it's a pretty straightforward mission.

The Doctor has one final task for you in Act Five: erase all logs of The Doctor's activities. Once again you're fighting Crey, which by this point is a bit stale, though there are two very interesting bosses to fight in the form of Agents Chalmers and Ruthven - another nod to the Gordon Stacy arcs, and nicely done because they appear out of the Crey tank armor they sport in canon. The two of them give some disturbing hints that you're not really who you think you are. Defeating each of them causes destructible mainframes to appear - these are the log files and the backups. Note: I once again ran into the bug where spawned destructibles can't be targeted. Authors should really avoid this construct to avoid frustration. I didn't dock anything for it as I once again managed to work around the problem by targeting through pets.

The exit dialog and the final discussion with The Doctor reveal the truth: you haven't actually been your real self this whole time, but a copy. You've managed to free yourself by virtue of the system reset in Act Five, but all you remember was walking into a killer-GM map full of Ghost Widows. The Doctor commends your clone for bravery and signs off.

There's a lot to like about this arc, but there were some things that bothered me. The fact that you didn't actually rescue Fusionette in Act One I found first confusing and then frustrating - are you really rescuing anyone then? The Ghost Widow thing threw me for a loop, and while it's an interesting question what would happen if Crey tried to clone a ghost, the story doesn't do anything further with it and IMHO it distracts from the core storyline.

I've gone back and forth about the ending. There aren't really any hints about it prior to Act Five that I saw, which might make it seem a little like a cheap trick. But the more I thought about it, the more inevitable it seemed - if all the heroes really are getting cloned on the way out of the system, there's no one to recruit except for clones. Is this a moment of Fridge Brilliance? Not so fast. If I was a clone to begin with, why wasn't I programmed to obey Crey? Did The Doctor subvert my programming? If so, I think the beginning needs some tweaking - the original setup was that The Doctor blasted her email out to all heroes hoping for a bite, so it's an awkward fit.

Finally, the gameplay left me lukewarm. There are no custom factions to fight, only a few custom bosses in the final mission with fairly standard powers (MA/SR as I recall). Maybe it's because "Death to Disco!" also featured them, but I'm pretty tired of Crey tanks. Council and Freakshow are also pretty ho-hum at this point, leaving only the Arachnoid fights to hold my interest.

Even with these flaws I thought the arc was very strong. When I went back and re-read the Gordon Stacy arcs I realized how much research the author had done - I probably would have appreciated the arc more if I had done that beforehand instead of afterwards. It also does a great job of explaining Positron catching the Idiot Ball in blessing the AE to begin with (though you have to wonder, now that Posi's been restored, why he doesn't fight to shut it down). With a little work, this would easily be a 5-star arc and a nomination from me for higher status.

So what's the story with the rep badge? Was that info accurate? It sounded fishy to me.

Ah, that didn't occur to me. Personally I would almost rather lose a custom mob or two from the 2nd mission - it's the delivery of lines that made the arc for me. But that's personal taste, so YMMV. Issue 15 may shrink file sizes a bit so you may be able to fit in another detail.

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But if I invent it before i give it to myself, i'll create a paradox! I owe it to the timeline to NOT invent time travel!
Eco.

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Good thing we have such a responsible person with their finger in the dam... I shudder to think what fate would await us at the hands of a less scrupulous person.

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"possible niche audience" - I don't know how much I agree with this. My kids range from 15-19 and they all know enough about the Disco/Rock rivalry to get enough of the jokes to "get" the arc.

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It's not so much that people wouldn't get the jokes; it's more whether or not they would want to play an arc with that setup. I almost didn't mention this though since, as I said, the arc is Exactly What It Says On The Tin in the best possible sense; if there are people who aren't going to enjoy the arc's theme, they really have no excuse for playing it in the first place. You could probably strike that from the review; it didn't change my rating.

Bottom line, for me, is if the first mission had more zing it'd be a 5-star arc.

You'd probably really enjoy the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars). It's pretty firmly grounded in believable technological advances (what some of my friends call "hard" sci-fi).

I quite enjoyed The Anubis Gates, not because it handled time travel particularly well - it probably didn't - but because it included time travel, cloning, and mind control all in the same plot, to the point where you had no idea whether a character you were viewing was really who or when they were supposed to be. It was so mind-bending sorting through all the details that any flaws it had in execution would have been Fridge Logic moments I never got to.

I think my favorite time travel story of all time is a quick one-off by Philip K. Dick, in which a time traveler goes back in time and ends up giving himself a pen... which he keeps until he invents time travel, goes back in time, and gives it to himself again. Pretty awesome mind screw IMHO though I've now forgotten the name. The technique is mirrored to some extent in the psychology of Timecrimes, a recent low-budget rig way better than its title would suggest.

Arc #84420, "Death to Disco!"
tl;dr: 4 stars
Pros: Sharp humor, Exactly What It Says On The Tin
Cons: 1st mission a bit flat; some costume issues; possible niche audience

Reviewed on: 6/5/2009
Level range: 30-54,1-54
Character: 48 nin/nin stalker

You've been tapped by the Deity of Rock to prevent disaster: Dr. Disco Fever is attempting to prevent the death of disco by interfering in the events of 1977.

Act One has you correcting Dr. Fever's successful attempt to rewrite history by brainwashing Jimmy Carter into disco-izing the National Anthem. If this happens disco will never die, causing rock to disappear - an evil fate indeed. You're sent into an abandoned lab full of Crey, whose leader Sauer has been hired to do the brainwashing by Dr. Fever. Carter turns out to be a simple rescue; the boss fight is custom, but I didn't notice what the powersets were as I never got hit. Sauer has a few good lines, but the rest of the mission is a little lackluster, and overall I think is the weakest part of this short arc.

After you rescue Carter the timeline is restored, but Dr. Disco Fever is now attempting to prevent the burning of disco music at the "disco demolition". You zone into an open park area with crates of disco music you must destroy, fighting all-custom enemies done up in 70s style. The crate destruction appears to trigger battle details between hard rockers wielding (what else) axes and the disco afficionados, who have a variety of powers. The last crate triggers the arrival of Dr. Fever himself, a grav/something custom boss who spouts appropriate lines and eventually promises to return to fight another day. ("After all, I'm your Boogie man. That's what I am.")

The strongest point of this arc is that it's Exactly What It Says On The Tin: if you think you're going to enjoy an arc filled with disco in-jokes this arc will deliver. (If you don't, you may as well steer clear.)

I do think it could be improved in a few ways. First, the opening mission is somewhat lackluster, as I mentioned. Fighting Crey is a bit of a letdown, especially given that all you see in the upper 40s from that faction is tanks; I skipped most of the mission. Giving Carter a Secret Service escort or some other apropos detail would give a chance for more humor (Carter himself is deadpan dry, as he should be).

Second, I have a few costume nits in the final mission. The Disco DJs look suspiciously mod, and I can't quite figure out what the theme is for the Princes of Disco - they look a little preppy to me.

These details matter when the arc is this short, as everything needs to be memorable. I'd also note that there are at least three other disco-themed arcs I stumbled across when looking for this one. I haven't played any of the others, but apparently there is enough of a draw for this sort of thing to spawn competitors; if the author wants to keep the buzz as the disco arc to run, a little more pizazz wouldn't hurt.

You might think so, but apparently it's not that simple.

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It's like 2006 all over again... The FP used to be all level 54, and we had neither perma doms nor VEATs. Those were the days. The LRSF now is pretty easy if you have the right team build, where "right" is a lot looser than it used to be. If you don't... well, there's always the ITF.

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I need to PvP more.

I'm actually in favor of not even trying to eliminate farms. Instead, make it easy to filter them out (or filter on them), so that people not interested in farms never have to see them. With the tagging system in i15 this is possible.

Perhaps there is some hope both on the OP's part and on the part of other participants that (a) NCSoft can change their stance and/or behaviors in such a way that more people don't leave for the same reason as the OP, or (b) that there are other factors in play that the OP might not be aware of that would influence the decision to leave.

In both cases discussion seems beneficial.

Current queue:

Arc #84420, "Death to Disco!"
Arc #1152, "The Doctor Returns"

As an aside, please remember I'd like a link to the original review. I will be using it to inform my own review - that's unavoidable in cases that come from Venture's review thread, as I've been (mostly) keeping up to date on that one, and it only seems fair to apply the same rules to arcs reviewed in threads I don't keep up on.

To give an idea of what I'm aiming for I'm doing the first review unsolicited.

Arc #131780, "The Day I Tried to Live"
tl;dr: 3 stars. Offenses: Wangst, "Just Because It Happened To You"
Pluses: Creative premise, Narm

Reviewed on: 6/5/2009
Level Range: 30-54/41-54/30-54/40-50/41-54
Character used: lvl 48 nin/nin stalker

The whole premise of this arc is unlike anything I've encountered so far. The contact appears from nowhere (as a deliberate atmospheric move by the author), obviously in a state of hand-wringing despair and begging for your attention (which might or might not be a sly reference to the whole experience of authoring for the MA). The story unfolds as a past-tense narrative, with your character inserted into the action almost entirely in the role of observer: that is, while your character is the one performing actions, the narrative indicates that it's the contact who's doing them instead. The MA is basically a mechanic for delivering someone else's flashback.

Since I like original thinking, I gave the overall arc +1 star for creativity, which may tell you something about its other flaws.

Act One has you searching for the contact's missing girlfriend, upon whom the contact has hung an inordinate amount of his psychological wherewithal. (I had to wonder whether perhaps the poor girl fled from the contact's needy, co-dependent clutches.) You search the Mayhem hospital map full of Crey, and find her in a body bag.

So much for the contact's sanity. "He" (i.e. you) go on a rampage in Act Two on an adjacent Crey lab, which reveals that the kidnappings (the girlfriend was one of many) are part of a plot to mutate the Rikti into some higher state of being. For the first time you encounter the contact as a character - a non-required rescue (or possibly non-combat, fleeing ally). There are also some non-required destructible details with interesting clues.

At this point the story takes a left turn into delusional territory. As Act Three opens the contact declares himself to be God, grows wings, and flies through space to engage the Rikti on an orbiting ship. There was a bugged objective here, as the completion of one set of destructible objects spawns a second set, and one of the items in the second set was un-targetable. Fortunately I had run into that bug before and loaded up a 2nd account with an MM, whose pets could hit it, and I targeted the object through them and completed the mission.

Flush with victory, the contact returns to Earth in Act Four with inexplicable powers. He's completely lost it by this point, feeling himself to have dethroned God and put himself in his/her place, and wants to take over Earth to create a dominion in his own name. Statesman promptly arrives to put a stop to it, and you take him down with the help of the now-fully-combat-ready contact at your side (assuming you can find him on that cursed destroyed-Atlas map).

Gameplay note: the Statesman who appears in this map is actually only EB-class though he still has Unstoppable and Zeus Lightning. In an amusingly ironic twist, once States hit Unstoppable I stopped being able to hold aggro on him, and he promptly gave Red/The Great Destroyer/your contact the beatdown. Red resurrected himself, which I think was a bug since I believe he was /empathy and shouldn't have been able to cast rez on himself - and States promptly gave him the beatdown again. The contact's narrative assumes he won, which is why I referenced Narm in the summary, but I found the development highly amusing. Anyway, once Unstoppable wore off I took States down pretty quickly.

Afterwards the contact is overcome with remorse and self-loathing, and in Act Five decides to kill himself. This is accomplished by defeating something called The Machine, a psi blast/regen EB you have to face alone. The deed accomplished, you return to the contact (was he Skyping you from Purgatory?), who pours out his continuing despair and begs you not to leave him.

There is an element here of what I would call "real art" - my personal definition is deeply-felt emotions that demand so hard to be heard that the artist basically can't stop them from coming out. However, the story has a fatal flaw in that the delivery falls pretty flat.

I don't know if there's a trope for this, but I've been calling it "Just Because It Happened to You" (... "doesn't make it interesting"). In this case, the contact's loss of their girlfriend doesn't generate enough sympathy to carry the weight of all the self-important babble that follows. The narrative reads like the journal of a 17-year-old who's read too much Camus. News flash: every high school kid who's ever been dumped has railed against God, and many people are going to roll their eyes and skim when they start hearing stuff they're now embarrased they used to spout deadpan. As a result, what's supposed to be compelling drama turns into Wangst.

If the contact really is delusional, and all the stuff about sprouting wings and defeating Statesman is just stuff happening in his head, I think you need to rethink the approach. If you're trying to portray someone who's genuinely mentally ill and not just overcome with Wangst, there are things you can do to ground the narrative in the real world - relationships with other people, physical/mental incapacities related to the core problems, etc.

There's a secondary problem in that the whole Crey/Rikti sub-plot doesn't much tie in to anything else. There isn't enough information to conclude it's just the contact's crazy conspiracy theory, and if it's not, it's at best JABOSTH and at worst a canon violation.

Without the creative narrative techniques (and unintentional humor) I would've given this arc a 2, as it would need quite a bit of work to reach its full potential (-2 from max) and even then would probably only appeal to a small audience (max of 4 stars). However, I did enjoy elements of the gameplay, including (surprisingly) the chance to trounce Statesman after he did me the favor of giving the contact a much-needed kick in the pants.

EDIT: As I drove to work this morning it occurred to me that, psychologically, this is basically a retelling of "The Immoralist" by Andre Gide. Not sure if that was deliberate.

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Mary Sue

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In what way? How powerful the contact claimed to be?
...

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FYI, I took the liberty of using this as my first "second chances" review - see other thread.

I generally hate sitcoms for precisely that reason. There are some that stand out as exceptions, though; "Arrested Development" definitely has a strong theme of family, responsibility, and self-reliance (or lack thereof, depending on the character).

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I very much remember those statements in the past.

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Me too.

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What I believe has been said multiple times is this: Flipping does not raise the equilibrium price of items.

It is possible to raise the price of an item long term. However, over the long term, either the price you started with wasn't the equilibrium price (which I believe is the case in the OP's situation) or you will lose money propping up the price. The definition of "long term" is open to debate, and I think it's fair to say the creation of alternate sources of supply on many items (particularly salvage) has complicated the dynamics to the point where what was considered "long term" prior to i14 may well no longer be.

I meant a forum PM. My in-game global is Mind Forever Burning. I'm on the West Coast so I probably log in just as you're getting ready to log out. You might be able to catch me tomorrow morning.

I wish we could just email items to each other, it'd be a lot easier.

I've been following Venture's review thread, and I noticed there are quite a few arcs that sounded interesting to me to which Venture gave poor reviews. So I've decided to do an experiment: run only arcs that other reviewers have given poor ratings to, and see how my own opinion of those arcs stacks up against the original.

If you have an arc that garnered a poor review (3 stars maximum) that either (a) you believe is unwarranted, or perhaps overly colored by personal tastes, or (b) you have used in significantly reworking the arc, post in this thread and I'll try to give it a whirl.

When specifying arcs, please include:

Arc name and ID
Recommended character level
Link to original review
Any notes on whether the arc has been changed since that review

Note: I'm only accepting nominations for which the original review was 3 stars or less. If you got a higher review rating, you're probably doing OK.