OzzieArcane

He's not really an alt if he's the only character you use regularly. That would be a Main. I play my alts a fair amount, but I do usually end up playing my mains more then my other characters. Even though they're both level 50 (A tanker and a Mastermind). But then I still haven't explored all the content and I never had a 50 prior to last year even though I've played on and off since launch.

Next to nothing ever phases Ultimo Girl. Nothing short of sheer numbers or a tough boss can take her down. So I don't have a problem with most enemies, but I'm sure that would probably change if someone set everything in a group to extreme.

As for other characters, I'd say any enemy group people make that has too many holds and debuffs in it. A certain group in a MA Arc I played made a mess of President Evil cause they had too many powers to lock down me and my pets. I personally never put more then one enemy in a group that's capable of using mez powers. Unless we're talking unique bosses.

Reviews regardless of anything else should do at least 2 things. Let the author know if there are things that should or could be done to improve their story arc. However without making suggestions that would drastically effect the story. 2nd, they should help give the reader an idea of whether or not the arc is worth giving a shot.

Stuff done with the review for entertainment value and what not aren't bad but if they are done in a way that ignores the first two things I mentioned, you gotta ask what's the point of the review? To try and be an internet superstar? Not gonna happen through these forums.

I've been fairly satisfied with most reviews I have gotten and especially made a lot of changes to my lowbie arc in response to reviews I've gotten.

Arc ID#221702 In Pursuit of Liberty by @Gypsy Rose

Rating: ****

This will be a short review. Ran on Ultimo Girl. Starting dialogue was weird. The way Ms. Liberty kept saying her in a sentence where she should have been saying she.

Overall it's a good arc. The story is interesting and the villain group has a well designed look. But the villains don't have much of a motivation that's explained. Yeah they don't like the Liberty League. Why? Why the Liberty League in particular? I'm sure there are plenty of other heroes willing to knock them on their bum as well. This could use some explaining.

So could why MAL is such a major threat, he's such a threat that he can cause an apocalyptic future, so this could use some explaining as well. All I got in regards to these things was a little bit of a summary when I clicked on MAL to look at his info, but not everyone is going to do that. Lots of players may complete the arc scratching their head not understanding why half of these things happened. You've got a good story here, but the backstory portion for the villains could use a little explaining.

Ok so I got a new computer and obviously had to reinstall the game because of this. However it seems that my computer is patching far slower then it should. I've got really high speed internet but it keeps bouncing between about 11kb/sec and 15kb/sec.

I turned off Vista's hand holding mode and I made sure the firewall makes an exception for CoH. Is there anything else I'm forgetting about?

Just letting people know I will still get to all the arcs posted so far but I will not be taking anymore submissions for the time being. I got a new computer that I need to set up and various other reasons that I'm not going to be taking on anymore arcs.

I've come to realize, arcs don't feel as enjoyable to me when I'm trying to review them. So once I finish up my Queue, I won't be doing anymore unless it's in someone else's review for a review thread.

Just curious. What server do you play on?

I don't think I've conversed with you much on the forum. But good luck in your endeavors regardlessly.

As for college advice. Well, I'm a college drop out and once you screw up your GPA it's hard to do much unless you start from scratch. Do not take anything lightly, I did and now I've pretty much given up on education. Not that it would help much in Michigan anyhow but...

If you don't have to work at the same time as going to school, then don't. If you parents are willing to help you out and let you just concentrate solely on school do so. I tried going to school full time (12 hours) and working a part time job at the same time. You do not have time to do anything else, you don't have spare time at all. It is recommended that you study twice as much time as you spend in class so you figure if you have a total of 12 hours of class then you have to study 24 and that's 38 hours on school work a week. That's close to what most people consider a full time job, heck I work slightly less hours then that right now and I still feel like I never have time to do what I want. That + a part time job is insane!

In short do not even consider playing an MMO while you're in college unless you don't have to work a job. Everquest was one of the things that did me in. If you can concentrate solely on school it will go much faster as well. At most people shouldn't have to go to a community college for more then 2 years, but I know people who have went 4 simply because they have too much going on.

Those are my thoughts anyhow.

And boy do I have rotten luck. First mission, defeat all, can't find the last enemy and I get mapserved with 6 minutes left on the clock.

/headdesk

Arc ID # 221240 "The Audition" by MrCaptainMan

I ran this arc on Ultimo Girl

Apparently I'm trying out for a spot on the Freedom Phalanx roster and the contact is Synapse. And I gotta admit, his text leading into the first mission got a few chuckles out of me.

Mission 1

Apparently on my way to save Skyway City I somehow ended up on another planet with some crazy scantily clad blue women who don't want me to leave. They seem to share a hive mind and rattle on about how they love me as I beat them senseless. Makes me feel kinda bad.

BTW, having all the nodes spawn seperately made this mission a little more annoying then it needed to be.

Mission 2

Once again Synapse teleports me to the wrong place. Someone needs to get Scotty in here to tell him how to do it right. Now I'm in a cave and I venture in to see what's... HOLY CRAP IT'S LORD RECLUSE! I gather my nerve and run up delivering a foot stomp and... ok he's not an enemy. Finish clobbering his men surrounded him before he tells me that he's going to follow me around because he finds me amusing. Oddly enough I don't find this idea out of character for him. "Yes, beat my minions senseless for my amusement! MWA HA HA HA!"

I had to go in a bit further before I stopped wondering why Recluse's secret hide out was a standard cave, and then I realized it wasn't. Just out of curiousity, what map is this?

Mission 3

This time Synapse mistakenly teleports me into a Praetorian base. I'm not gonna say much because I don't wanna spoil the plotline for the stage too much. But..



That got a lot of laughs out of me.

Mission 4

Now I seem to be facing a group of evil nuns from the future attempting to steal gold from a bank. Not much trouble for Ultimo Girl.



Is that the best you got?!

Mission 5-6 involved some interesting enemies but I don't have much to say about them.

Overall I really enjoyed this arc. An interesting way of doing things, each mission felt like it's own individual story and had plenty of amusing moments. Didn't have much of a sensible plot but it didn't need to cause it was fun. Helped cheer me up while I'm sick anyhow.

Rating: *****

For anyone interested. I have some screen caps from the villain costume contest.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...5-14-38-18.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...5-14-38-35.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...5-14-38-31.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...5-14-38-24.jpg

Not embedding them since they'd stretch the forum

Arc ID#246464 "Hooray for Hamster Hell!" by Eraserdog

I started running this on President Evil and ended up doing it on Ultimo Girl for reasons explained in the review

Ok... to start off with this is kind of amusing. The contact is a body bag. Not only is the contact a body bag but the thing hangs out of the hologram field.

This is a rather interesting way to open things up. The contact is dead and I have to investigate what happened to him.

Mission 1

I was going to try an in character review. But the first mission completely threw me out of that idea. Becaus the custom group is so bloody anti Mastermind that it's not funny. Between blinding me so I couldn't tell my pets what specifically to attack, blinding my pets so they run around like chickens with their heads cut off, rain or arrows and whatever else was messing with my control over them. I was banging my desk in frustration. I was less irritated then this soloing Lord Recluse on Invincible. I might rerun this later on a different character to see if it's any better but man those powers are nasty.

On another note, this is an outdoor map, an outdoor map where objectives appear after another objective is completed. There are at least 2 objectives that weren't there at the beginning and by the time I finished the mission I had to have run back and forth across the park a good 4 or 5 times.

Storywise far as I can tell people are mutating into some monster things and there seems to be a cult involved. Alright then... off we go.

Mission 2

Cult pamphlet says something about the tormented spirits of dead hamsters being the cause of the people going crazy. I suppose I'll go pummel these cultists senseless to find some answers.

Gather books and from what I can gather a defeat all... gathered all the books and now I have to fight the Cult Leader. This is something you really need to avoid. I already had to search the whole warehouse to find the books. There isn't much logical reason to have been able to run around the whole place and not find him before the objective so you should keep the glowies near the entrance and him at the back if you really want the player to get the glowies first that bad. Instead they were all over the map.

Elite Boss is a necromancer. Sadly he's still much easier then the park rangers I dealt with in the last mission. Name's Evermanns, at least he looks pretty cool. One of the better looking wizard customs I've seen.

And another linked objective. Now I have to run around saving scrolls. This felt needlessly tacked on. As did the defeat all objective with how much running around you already have to do in this mission.

Mission 3

At this point I had to take a break from the game to take care of something... unfortunately for me this ment I had to start all over again cause this mission had a time limit. So I redid the first two with Ultimo Girl since she usually steamrolls things.

Now I'm in Hamster Hell to defeat the monsters behind the whole nonsense and close the place down.

This mission has an annoying objective string. Boss - Boss - Boss - Destroy Object - Boss. Oh ant a 45 minute time limit!

Hamstray?! The evil monster behind the whole thing is named Hamstray?!

Dealing with 4 enemies that are Elite Boss or higher with a 45 minute time limit, may lose you a lot of players. Especially people that don't have the damage output they need. The only reason I managed to defeat Eversmann it seemed was because for whatever reason he suddenly made a run for it and stopped healing himself.

My overall thoughts

You tried too hard to cram too much into each mission it felt. There was a story there though at times I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be funny or serious. But the way you set up objectives was increasingly irritating each mission. People hate to backtrack because they missed something, but you make them backtrack multiple times in every mission. Just because a map has 9 possible objectives doesn't mean they all need to be used for objectives that are required to complete the mission. I understand that you wanted things to occur each mission in a certain order, that was obvious but in that event you should try to make them to appear on the map in the order you want them to be dealt with rather then having each objective spawn the next. Especially since from a story standpoint some of these don't make sense like with the bosses and the warped wheel. Clearly plotwise they were there the whole time, so it doesn't make sense that they might not be on the map when you pass that area till you've done something else.

Now for the factions. First the group from the first map that consisted of people who I assume were turning into Hamster monsters. Some reason even though they felt the least important storywise, they were the most powerful of your custom groups. I know there were a few standard enemies in there but this group had the ability to immobilize, hold, stun, and blind players. I imagine if I did this on anything without pets or mez protection that I'd have been crying for my mommy because President Evil already face planted against them multiple times cause all their powers were messing with my ability to control my pets. Ultimo Girl only died against them in the second mission when an ambush joined in, though even in the first mission I saw her health dipping a lot more then it does against Malta.

The other factions were perfectly fine balance wise as far as I can tell. I have to admit the description for Gansu made me laugh. But this group makes me wonder if you actually play tested your arc since you used the Thorn Wielders from the reflection group. You do know that all those enemies look ghostly right? Yet for their description they seemed like they were just supposed to be regular cultists.

I can honestly say you might wanna think about some things I said before anyone else tries your arc (I saw it had no previous ratings) cause I know some other people will be a lot harsher on it. The only reason you're not getting a lower rating is because I can tell you were actually trying as far as the story was concerned, but the arc needs some adjustments to be what I'd consider fun.

Rating: ***

Am I the only one who suddenly hears the GI Joe theme in their head from looking at Tommy's costume?

1 Star = Farms or other rubbish that has nothing resembling a plot
2 Star = Horribly horribly bad. You can tell they had a plot in mind but the person was too incompetent to deliver it. This is basicly what I'd rate something if I can tell someone else might have been able to make a decent arc out of the idea. I believe most our forum dwellers are above this which is why you'll almost never see me rate this low in a review.
3 Star = Not terrible, but something just didn't click for me.
4 Star = The Story was excellent but the missions themselves fell short of perfect. Also this could be vice versa, the mission had awesome combat but that story wasn't quite good enough.
5 Star = I fully enjoyed the arc. Both the battles and the story.

Thanks Arrowrose. I'm amazed you picked that of my arcs to run since it's much harder then my other two. I'll make sure to get to your arc after I get a few others on my list.

Not sure if you two would be interested but my Lowbie arc that you reviewed before has went through a number of changes since being battered by a number of reviewers.

Stealing an idea here... ran the arc on Ultimo Girl



Arc ID#4829 "Chains of Blood by Venture

Oh hey look it's Azuria. She really gets around for a low level contact doesn't she? She informs me that two heroes have fallen into the clutches of the Circle of Thorns. We can't be having that now can we?

Mission 1

I enter the Circle base and hear Legacy of Chain going at it with them. However they were no match against this group of Circle members as not one of them was left alive by the time I got there.

I punch my way through the hordes of enemies until I come across a rather creepy looking mage spouting some nonsense about blood and what not. I proceed in to free the heroes and that's that.

(So that's your in game avatar eh Venture?)

Mission 2

Apparently Legacy Chain ticked off the Thorns. So they're attacking them and trying to get information out of them. Ultimo Girl to the rescue! Not sure who I feel more bad for, the Legacy Chain fighting overleveled enemies or the Circle for having to fight me.

Run into another creepy blood mage guy. This one manages to get in some good hits. I take him down and save another person

Mission 3 & 4

I don't have much to say about these. There was definately more of the story revealed but as far as what was going on in them, they almost felt identical to the first 2 missions.

Mission 5

I have to battle all the Blood Redeemers one last time here, destroy an alter, and see an interesting little twist. After having the story early on say "It doesn't involve the Mu, No really!" the Mu show up and so does their goddess.

My thoughts: I kinda have mixed feelings on this arc. I actually am probably a rarity in that I like fighting the Circle of Thorns. But each of the Blood Redeemers looked the same except for their colors so it felt like I was fighting the same guy over and over again(Even with their different powers).

I like that it felt like something I could see happening as an official mission, but also the first 4 missions felt rather repetive.

Overall it's a well written story with some interesting twists, but it felt a little dragged out.

And of course I figured I wouldn't see any grammar/spelling errors in one of your arcs. So I didn't have any of those to mention.

Rating: ****

I find this ironic since with custom groups you aren't allowed to have a gap. But Snakes is the only group I know of with this issue. All other factions with a level gap are split into more then one group (Family, Banished Pantheon, etc.)

I could see the Elites from the invasions giving 1 merit. Since the Elites tend to be spread out enough that you wouldn't fight too many of them.