OzzieArcane

Just a little bump to post up my Queue

#4829 - "Chains of Blood" by Venture
#246464 - "Hurray of Hamster Hell" by Eraserdog
#221240 - "The Audition" by MrCaptainMan
#5909 - "Amazon Avatars" by Shagster
#253542 - "The Boneyard" by Captain Zero
#94504 - "Daytime Divas" by Deathbug

Glad you enjoyed it. President Evil will be appearing in one last arc (While he's the President of Evil Incorporated, he's not the leader of Big Evil which Evil Incorporated is part of.)

Thanks for pointing out some of the errors, honestly you're the first person to play it since I made changes after I15 hit and that last mission was one I added to try to get rid of the errand boy feel most villain arcs have. There actually was a mission earlier in the arc I removed to make room for it.

The appeal of the Station Pass is that you get access to a large selection of games for less then the price of 2. Those games include Everquest, Everquest 2, Everquest Online Adventures, Planetside, Star Wars Galaxies, Vanguard, and until recently Matrix Online. At the moment wouldn't NCsoft only be City of Heroes, Lineage, and Lineage II?

President.... EVIL!


Green She Devil


Ultimo Girl... I should screencap her more creative costumes.

I'd just like to state, the argument going on in this thread is a pretty good example of why I've mostly kept my mouth shut in regards to people's review style.

This one's going to be kind of a quick one since I don't have too much to say regarding it.

Arc ID 171031 : The Fracturing of Time
Rating: ****

My thoughts: This was a very well written story and there are only a few things that kept it from earning a 5 star rating from me. One of which is the Kyrdosi themselves, I had very little chance to see them and have much of a feel for their existance before they got gobbled up and turned into evil ghost people. It kind of kills much ability to be able to feel a connection to the story. You did manage to somewhat counter this with another major plotpoint however...

The contact, I had a guess near the beginning of Mission 2 who it was supposed to be and I wasn't that far off. The main thing that gave it away was that you clearly used a male character model but because my character is a girl, it kept referring to the contact as a her. Still the whole shedding your emotions thing did a pretty good job at dealing with disconnection I was feeling with the plot.

Honestly, I feel that the few flaws about this arc are mostly due to the MA's limitations. I'm sure you probably wanted a lot of things to have a more ghostly feel then they did, but you did a good job working with what you had.

Anyhow those are my thoughts. Managed to finish just before the servers went down for maintenance.

Spent a good chunk of my time doing the Manticore TF on my level 50 tanker. But I got a scrapper from 2-15 and a Arachnos Soldier from 5-13.

I don't get these people that support CO so heavily. You really want WoW with Superheroes that bad? Not to mention not having playable villains = instant fail for me.

More on topic however. I love the loyalty program, mainly cause it has perfect timing for me. My year sub would be running out in October so it's the perfect time to subscribe for another year and get 2 free months.

The Revenge of Dr. Marcovici: #161797

I ran this arc as Ultimo Girl as the author recommended.

Right off the bat, looking at the mission list. I'm saying you should change all the missions to be level 20-54. With the ability to change level ranges there is no reason to leave 2 of the missions at 1-54 when you have 2 that are 20-54. And.... having played the whole thing now, definately change the missions to all be 20-54. Anyone below 20 wouldn't be even remotely prepared for that boss at the end IMO.

Mission 1

Nice starting dialogue from the contact. Jumps right into making the player feel important. Contact needs a description added, it's still the default MA description.

So the Freaks asked for me specifically. I'm flattered. Inspite of them being one of the groups that goes all the way to level 50, they've never felt even remotely important to me, so I find myself wondering what's up.

The mission itself wasn't bad. But felt like a lot of nothing just to find a note at the end from the Freak's employer. Freaks could use a little dialogue to give a better feeling of what's going on. At least from their perspective. The mercenary comments were nice but maybe have some of them questioning why it's so important to capture the player.

Mission 2

The M-7 guys look interesting. Thought some of them do look awkward as that helmet kinda clashes with their outfit. Was that "Not Marcovici" a boss objective at the end or did I just get a random boss spawn? If it was an objective he should be a requirement and maybe attach a clue to him. Otherwise it seems completely pointless for him to be there seeing as I got the clue before the last room and didn't need to fight him. I just decided to check the last room for the heck of it.

Mission 3

The briefing text is interesting. It's up to you but I got some slack for doing something like this. Most of what the contact had to say, should probably be discovered by the hero through clues in the previous mission or 2. It makes the player feel more involved then having the contact tell them everything. On another note however, a nice little plot twist. It uses something that a player couldn't claim they didn't do unless they skipped the tutorial. It's kind of a major flashback for my character seeing as at level 50, Outbreak is a long distant memory.

I'm just defusing the bombs right? Why do you have them set to dissapear? Turning a bomb off doesn't make it suddenly go poof! No new information was discovered here. This Dr. is making me want to give him a taste of my fist now.

Mission 4

Don't got much to say about this mission. It was rather short and not much happened.

The debriefing however was a massive twist. Either stop yourself from being framed or save two heroes who are being held hostage. No time to do both.

Part H

I chose to save the heroes rather then my reputation. I feel it's the decision most true heroes would make.

Mission 1

Pretty short and straight forward mission. Not much to say. Nice debriefing, however where you have the word "down" I believe you intended to say "done".

Mission 2

I understand that the Longbow consider my framed hero a priority over the main reason they're in the warehouse. But they still shouldn't be walking past the baddies s though they're buddies. Maybe consider settng the Longbow patrols to Rogue and you can set them to hard if you don't want them getting defeated by the regular enemies.

When Coyote says "I must get back to my post in Outbreak" it feels kind of silly. I'm pretty sure Outbreak wasn't intended to be considered a place, it was more or less an event that your character goes through.

During the mission debriefing, lair is mispelled as liar.

Mission 3

Time to take on the big bad guy finally. RADIATION?! ACK! OW! Seriously though this guy is the only thing in the whole arc that actually put me in any sort of danger. I had to activate Strength of Will to avoid faceplanting but that's what I expect out of a boss, so don't look at this as a complain.

Final Thoughts

You're very creative and you do a good job with dialogue when you're actually conveying a plot point. But there are a few times through out the missions where it just feels like everyone is just going through the motions so to speak. However you did something I've never seen anyone do before. You actually made the arc feel like it's about the player. Not only because the villain frames the player, but because it also uses a bit of story that most people can't claim they haven't done. Everyone always says you can't assume anything about the player, the only thing you assume is that they have played through the tutorial. Even if they haven't done so with the character theyr'e using, most people have played through the tutorial numerous times and know what happened in it. So generally, these references are things that won't be lost on anyone except maybe the AE farm babies. It's enjoyable to face a villain who I'm fighting because they legitimately hate me rather then having some standard villain motive and I'm just stopping them. For this reason alone I'm giving you a 5 star rating. I feel some things could use some improving but overall it's an excellent story.

[ QUOTE ]
Custom Faction: The custom hellions made good use of Romulus Nictus’ sword. Frost Giants were mostly obscured by Ice Armor’s obtrusive toggles. The BE members looked entirely ridiculous, particularly President Evil. I could tell that they were supposed to be quite over-the-top, but President Evil might have been a bit much. They broke up the occasionally dull objective-hunting effectively.

[/ QUOTE ]

Kind of ironic, since President Evil is the only one who's completely based off a character I already. He's my mastermind.

[ QUOTE ]
The Ugly: The second mission spoiled this a bit for me. I found myself having to run the mission a second time because a Frost Giant vanished off the map. I know this isn’t your fault, but it’s a property of the map, and an arachnoid cave map was a strange choice in itself. It’s not that I didn’t like the arc, it’s that it didn’t do much to inspire me to want to replay it.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's the 2nd time someone told me that's happened to them. The previous person gave up on the arc when that happened. I'm gonna have to look into this. I need to make some serious updates to this arc anyhow.

Thanks for the feedback. I have a lot to think about with all these 3 star reviews it's gotten.

I personally haven't had a Venture review. But I don't shy away from criticism. I can't really improve if everyone is kissing my butt and I get that enough from SG members.

But then I'm used to criticism from when I used to make Anime Music Videos all the time. However in this case, it's much easier to go back and fix things.

[ QUOTE ]
In fact, is there really any reason not to just use the regular Hellions group in mission 1? You can change the group name of the Corrupted in the boss detail text settings anyway. That would probably fix the bug outright.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the ones over level 14 won't spawn if I do that. I'm gonna try fiddling around with it.

On another note. I'm actually kinda surprised, you're the only person who didn't complain about the custom 5th Column.

Any of the three in my sig could always use more feedback.

Cigars for women.

I think I just lost brain cells from these stories. How... HOW?!

[ QUOTE ]
Hmm, the arc is letting me be level 20 but Hellions cap at level 15. That is a lot of grey I see ahead of me. However there are a few "enhanced" Hellion bosses who are level 20, the Corrupted they are called. That's a fancy Nictus broadsword you have there, son.

Ok, if the objectives say that I need to defeat 2 enhanced Hellions, then why are there half a dozen of these guys hanging around and only certain ones who have the same name as all the others count?

Ok, how did you managed to get those two bosses standing next to each other and having a conversation? Was that just luck that they spawned right next to each other? How come the Damned and the Hellions with him were level 20 when the rest of the map is full of 15s?

Seems we have a spawning bug here of some sort.

[/ QUOTE ]

The Nictus Sword happened to be the only thing that really resembled what I wanted them to have. The idea is it's a weapon enhanced with dark magic.

As for the levels. You may not have noticed this, but if you go into the group editor the Hellions are 1-20. If you grab them as the enemies for the map itself however it only lists their regular level. So I made a custom group so they could go all the way to 20 and you encountered a bug that I've only seen on one of my playthroughs. Normally it'll spawn the higher level ones, but sometimes it's like it gets confused and won't spawn them at the right level. The Damned boss spawned at the right level though because there is a version of him I specifically picked that is labeled 10-20.

As for the bosses spawning next to each other. It's sort of a coincidence. There is a chance one of them will spawn at the top of the stairs they were next to. It looks kinda cool but it was an effect I hadn't really intended, President Evil was more supposed to be addressing the Hellions that were standing next to him.

[ QUOTE ]
It doesn't seem as if you're using a lot of customs so you probably have a lot of space. It wouldn't hurt to instead use multiple boss spawns and give each one some different dialog to make it less monotonous. You can still use the same plural and single objective text across all of the boss details.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm gonna be honest. I have no idea why this thought didn't occur to me. Especially since I've set up multiple patrols in other arcs that say different things.

[ QUOTE ]
Ok, it makes no sense for that Goldbricker boss to have a device to control the Clockwork. You know why? Because all the Clockwork in Paragon City are directly animated by the psychic powers of the Clockwork King, they do not actually function as robots at all. The only exception are the ones in Cap Au Diable, which are being animated by the energies being siphoned off of Bat'Zul by the PTS.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hadn't really thought of this. I'll remove the Clockwork.

[ QUOTE ]
Why was the Raid Leader, Psycho Falcon, only a Lieutenant?

[/ QUOTE ]

Unlike the other villains present. He's just an underling. If it were a higher level arc, he'd probably be a boss while they'd be elites. But since it's level 10-20 I didn't think he should be as tough as the others.

[ QUOTE ]
So now I'm hitting Big Evil at their base of operations, which is surprisingly run down looking.

[/ QUOTE ]

Their main hide out isn't in Paragon, they're an evil group trying to operate under the radar. Doesn't it make sense considering all the abyssmal looking warehouses some of the gangs hide out in.

[ QUOTE ]
Might be neater to use the Superadine Lab destructible, the one that glows and gives you a little recovery boost when you stand near it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I did, but correct me if I'm wrong. Didn't the destructible items get a massive nerf hammer? I know I had to reselect them all recently during an edit.

[ QUOTE ]
Is Human Succubus supposed to be so much taller than everyone else in the mission? Looks rather odd.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I wanted her to be a rather intimidating looking woman.

[ QUOTE ]
The story is barely existent and seems to just be a series of shallow cameos for the author's characters and/or SG mates.

[/ QUOTE ]

I won't really argue about it but President Evil is the only character that is technically one of my characters. Lord Xuma was my best friend's brute but seeing as he hasn't played the game in over a year, I made massive changes to the character to the point where he's hardly the same character (He never really gave him a backstory). Human Succubus and Psycho Falcon were completely made up for this story.

I do see many of your points and I'll keep them in mind as I continue to edit this story further. Thinking about it, I'm kinda surprised you were the first to point out the things about the Clockwork and Vahzilok.

If you're interested. I could always use more feedback on this one.

BE Prologue: Gangs United
Arc ID: 250480
Author: @Ozzie Arcane
Morality: Heroic
Length: 4 Missions
Level Range: 10-20
Enemy Groups: Hellions, Trolls, Vahzilok, Custom
Description: An evil organization plots to bring several gangs together under their banner.

I don't mean to complain. But did I get skipped over?

[ QUOTE ]
5 more slots available for submissions, if anyone wants it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know you just did one of my arcs but if you'd be interested in a higher level villain arc.

Arc Name: Web of Deception
Arc ID: 75310
Faction: Villainous
Author: @Ozzie Arcane
Level: 40+
Length: 5 Missions
Enemy Groups: CoT, PPD, Crey, Nemesis, Longbow, Custom
Synopsis: Aid President Evil in carrying out his latest scheme. To open a gateway to an alternate dimension.

You'll recognize the contact as a villain from the arc you just did. Also inspite of the warning. There is no extreme AV. There is an extreme EB and a weaker version of one of the signature AVs.

4 Masterminds (Everything but robots)
3 Tankers
3 Defenders
3 Arachnos Soldiers
3 Scrappers
2 Arachnos Widows
2 Brutes
1 of everything else.

[ QUOTE ]
Name: Trademark Infringement
Arc ID: 2220
Creator Global Name: @Wrong Number
Difficulty Level: Easy-Medium
Synopsis: We all know villains are not a very creative lot. Take over the world, pull the moon out of orbit....yada, yada, yada. It's no surprise that they keep the trademark lawyers very busy or that one of the lawyers has finally cracked. He needs to be stopped before this city is sued out existence!
Number of EB/AVS – 0
Story Type - Humor
Mission Count: 1
Estimated Time to Play: about 15 minutes

[/ QUOTE ]

Ran the arc on Ultimo Girl.

The contact Ms. Manners informs me that there are a bunch of wannabes trademarking their rip off gimmicks. Ok...

As soon as I enter the mission, I'm greeted by the fist of a man named Ten Pin. I couldn't help but laugh upon reading his description. Facebook? I proceeded in to face the next enemy and... dear god!

About halfway through the mission. I felt as though I weren't dressed properly for the occasion. So I switched costumes.

Is it bad that I actually can tell who all these villains are supposed to be? I know a lot of these would be lost on my friends. One minor complaint about the group. For the most part, you got a nice variety going. But something just feels a little too... batty.

The group definately isn't overpowered seeing as how they couldn't hurt me even when I stood still. Granted I'm a tanker but even the boss couldn't do anything, I actually read their bios while they waled on me.

I'm not going to quote any of the dialogue here because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't played it already, but it is an excellent parody. A lot of their dialogue sounds exactly like the kinds of things you'd hear out of crybabies in an MMO.

All in all it was very entertaining. Thought I was a little dissapointed that the cheesy names the contact listed off at the beginning never appeared.

I'm rating it 5 stars. Because I feel the mission accomplished it's goal. It was an enjoyable little comedy and it's hard to nitpick over things that aren't intended as Canon. The other reason for the rating is it's shortness, it was good that it's short. It might not have been as enjoyable if you had decided to stretch it out into a multi mission arc. This is one case where shortness works in the arcs favor. {Aside from being easy to access.)

Note: More reviews to come over the weekend. Things haven't gone my way time wise this week.

Thanks for giving my arc another try. I don't know if you noticed, but I changed the Arachnoid cave to a different smaller one. Honestly I picked it because I wanted something heroes haven't seen a thousand times, do you personally think I'd be better off with a different cave map?

On another note, I'm curious if you actually encountered the Vahzilok ambush in the Troll mission this time. I know from reading your previous review, they must have got lost on their way to you. (They spawned off the "Troll Guard")

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The other day, I was arguing with someone about how dull and boring MA farms were. Then behind me I heard the unmistakeable voice of the MA (Nevermind that it doesn't have a voice)

"That's a shame Mr. Arcane"

Next thing I know, I wake up and I'm a girl! WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!

[/ QUOTE ]

You better get off the interwebs then, you're not allowed here any more. >

[/ QUOTE ]

Now I'm confused AND sad.